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SELECTIONS FROM THE 
POETRY OF JOHN PAYNE 



SELECTIONS FROM 
THE POETRY OF 

JOHN PAYNE 

MADE BY TRACY & LUCY ROBINSON 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
LUCY ROBINSON ^ ^ ^ ^ 



JOHN LANE CO., THE BODLEY HEAD 
67 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. MCMVI 






Authorized Edition 



f^otes 



V 



Printed by Ballantvnk, Hanson &' Co. 
At the Ballantyne Press 



INTRODUCTION 

By LUCY ROBINSON 

The publication of this, the first selected edition of 
Payne's verse, is an appeal to all lovers of poetry on 
behalf of one of its uncrowned kings — widely known, 
it is true, as a translator, but as a poet receiving less 
than insular recognition. 

For years we have pored over his five published volumes 
with wonder and delight ; nor have we been able to 
understand how the English-speaking world can so long 
have remained in comparative ignorance of their author's 
genius. At last, upon the publication in London, by 
the Villon Society, of two quarto volumes, bearing 
the date 1902 and the title, "The Poetical Works of 
John Payne," in a limited numbered edition, we have 
asked for and have been granted permission to offer to 
American readers such of the poems as in our opinion 
shall awaken interest and stimulate desire for more. 
The Villon edition embraces some five thousand lines 
of new matter, thrown off for the most part between 
the months of January and March 1902, during a 
marked visitation of the muse immediately following 
the completion of an exhaustive translation of the 
works of the Persian poet Hafiz — a task that for nine 
years had absorbed the powers, bodily and mental, of the 
retired London solicitor. 



vi INTRODUCTION 

The early poems, reproduced with but slight verbal 
alterations and few additional lines in the "Poetical 
Works," consisted of " The Masque of Shadows, and 
Other Poems," 1870 ; "Intaglios," 1871 ; "Songs of 
■Life and Death," 1872; " Lautrec," 1878; "New 
Poems," 1880. Among the first to feel the charm 
of the new singer — who was born in London, August 
23rd, 1842 — were Matthew Arnold and the aged poet 
Home — the former highly commending his work ; the 
latter protesting almost fiercely against the reading 
world's apparent indiflFerence to it. Indeed, it was the 
established men of the period — Tennyson, Browning, 
Rossetti, above all Swinburne and Theodore Watts- 
Dunton — who gave to John Payne the unhesitating 
reception his first ventures deserved ; whereas, to a 
certain extent, the men of his own generation have 
stood aloof, as if conscious of having little in common 
with a writer unaccustomed by nature or habit to " the 
sweet uses of advertisement," and shrinking irresistibly 
from the electric glare cast by cheap journalism. At 
a period when an author's personality seems of more 
importance than anything he may utter, we do not 
hesitate to say that, could the poetry and personality of 
John Payne be no less vigorously advertised than were 
Rossetti's, the "Intaglios" and "Ballad of Isobel" 
would become, to say the least, as familiar to readers 
far and wide as the sonnets and "Blessed Damozel" 
of the latter poet. 

But while Mr. Payne's lack of acquaintance with 
journalists and journalism has been such as to keep his 
work in the background, nevertheless the leading journals 
and critics, not only of England but of France, accorded 
him from the first an appreciation genuine and discrimi- 
nating as it was unstinted. The JVestminster Review^ 



INTRODUCTION vii 

one of the most independent and self-centred of English 
literary organs, observed at different periods : — 

" Mr. Payne belongs to that small body of cultivated 
men who will probably be the glory of Victorian 
literature. . . . We gladly welcome Mr. Payne amongst 
that select number of poets that already comprises such 
names as Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris. . . . The art 
of ballad-writing has long been lost in England, and 
Mr. Payne may claim to be its restorer. . . . He may 
not be popular with the blind multitude, but he is 
sure to be so with all lovers of poetry, both to-day 
and to-morrow. . . . Posterity will place him between 
Tennyson and William Morris, side by side with 
Swinburne and D. G. Rossetti." 

The AthencEuyn declared : — 

" There can be no question that Mr. Payne is a poet. 
Even in these days, when the accomplishment of verse 
is so common, the poet is just as distinguishable as he 
ever was from the prose-writer who has ' learned the 
trick.' The power of looking at the world through the 
glamour that floats before the poet's eyes is not to be 
taught, and it cannot be denied that herein Mr. Payne's 
endowment is exceptional." 

The Academy said of "New Poems": "Mr. Payne 
has proved himself to be a master of his art. The 
present volume is an advance in power upon its pre- 
decessors, even as each one of them had been upon its 
forerunner." 

From The Spectator we quote : " Really beautiful 
verse, modulated with quite exquisite skill, and adorned 
with a marvellous wealth of the richest word-painting, 
of varied imagery and delicate fancy. The power shown 
in 'Salvestra' it would be difficult to exaggerate." 

La Renaissance reviewed "Son2:s of Life and Death" 



viii INTRODUCTION 

at length, declaring that, to borrow the poet's own 
language : " II a presse son coeur comme une grappe 
mure, et il en est coule de la poesie — de la vraie poesie." 
Doubtless, the reviewer had in mind the despairing 
protest in " Shadow-Soul " : — 

" There ivas great love in this man s soul ! 
Ay, bitter, crushed-out wine of love 
Pressed out upon his every word." 

In an extended review in Le National Theodore de 
Banville exclaimed : " Mr. John Payne a public trois 
livres delicieux," and dwelt upon the " chant magnifique 
compose pour la France pendant I'hiver de 1870-71. 
Quel courage il y avait alors a elever, seul, la voix pour 
nous, seul dans I'Angleterre et peut-etre dans I'Europe." 
The paragraph refers to seven stanzas written shortly 
before the capitulation of Paris, and published under the 
title of "France," in "Songs of Life and Death," but 
in the complete edition restored to their original place, 
as part of the long poem " Salvestra " : — 

" Ah, land of roses ! France, my love of lands ! 
How art thou fallen from thy high estate ! 
Bending, thou writhest in the Vandals' hands, 
And the crowned spoiler sitteth in thy gate. 
My heart is sore for thee," 

Of " Sleepers and One that Watches," Mr. Swinburne 
wrote in " The Dark-Blue " : — 

"Mr. Simeon Solomon's sketch has been translated 
into verse of kindred strength and delicacy, in three 
fine sonnets of high rank, among the exquisite and 
clear-cut ' Intaglios ' of Mr. John Payne." 

Mr. Watts-Dunton has somewhere written : — 

"There is more imagination, more romance, and 



INTRODUCTION ix 

more of what / call beauty in Mr. Payne's work than in 
that of any living man, save one " — meaning, of course, 
Swinburne. 

In the field of translation, according to Richard 
Garnett, Mr. Payne is " literally without a rival." The 
Westminster Review asserts that "As past-master in the 
difficult and ungrateful art of translation from widely 
differing languages, he stands practically alone." The 
paths of poet and translator often lie close together : 
the poet is always, in one sense or another, and some- 
times to an extraordinary degree, a linguist. The author 
of the following translations, published in twenty-seven 
volumes by the Villon Society, is a passionate linguist, 
who has done noble work in the cause — if not in the 
name — of comparative literature : — 

" The Poems of Master Francois Villon of Paris " ; 
"The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," 
nine volumes; "Tales from the Arabic," three 
volumes ; " The Decameron or Boccaccio," three 
volumes ; " Alaeddin and Zein ul Asnam," two stories 
from the Arabic ; " The Novels of Matteo Bandello," 
six volumes; "The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam"; 
" The Poems of Hafiz," three volumes. 

The Society has also in preparation : — 

" The Book of Kings, from the Persian of Firdausi " ; 
"The Pentameron of Giambattiste Basile, done into 
English from the Neapolitan original " ; " The Life and 
Death of Cuculain, a romance cycle from the ancient 
Irish " ; and " Francois Rabelais and other Prose 
Sketches." 

At present the reputation of John Payne rests largely 
upon his "Arabian Nights" and metrical translation of 
Villon's "Greater and Lesser Testaments" and minor 
poems. Even owners and readers of the aforesaid trans- 



X INTRODUCTION 

lations, who know them too well to confound their 
author with John Howard Payne, the native of New 
York City, who wrote the song, " Home, Sweet Home," 
have expressed surprise on being told that the English 
translator is the author of more than thirty thousand 
lines of original verse. 

In 1 88 1, just as Mr. Payne was putting the last 
stroke to the first of the nine volumes of " Nights," 
Mr. Robinson passed a delightful evening with him 
in his solitary London quarters. He had found a rare 
spirit. Soon after returning to America he undertook 
to secure the publication of the poems in the United 
States, by showing them to the late Charles Dudley 
Warner, as well as to many others. Mr. Warner re- 
sponded heartily ; he made repeated efforts to interest 
publishers in the proposition, but, meeting with no 
encouragement, was compelled reluctantly to abandon 
it. His urgent request, in 1 897, that Mr. Payne would 
write the Villon article for " A Library of the World's 
Best Literature," never reached him. To a friend in 
America he wrote : " Have had several very kind letters 
from Mr. Warner, who has taken a great deal of trouble 
to no purpose." With the exception of the group of 
selections, mainly from "Thorgerda" and the sonnets, 
given in Stedman's " Victorian Anthology," we are 
aware of no other attempt, on this side of the water, 
to place John Payne's original work on the footing 
it unquestionably merits. The copious collection of 
"Ballads and Rondeaus" by Gleeson White (Walter 
Scott, London), includes a greater number of the more 
sparkling lyrics than are to be found in the " Victorian 
Anthology " ; and in William Sharp's " Sonnets of this 
Century " we detect the glimmer of three of the 
"Intaglios." But the English collections, owing to 



INTRODUCTION xi 

their prescribed limits, convey no idea of the poet's 
range as a thinker and scholar. The bent of his mind 
was scholarly from childhood ; and though his youth 
was passed in uncongenial pursuits amidst unlovely sur- 
roundings, he seems ever to have been like a delicate 
instrument played upon by the kindred harmonies of 
poetry and music. In the latter a few violin lessons 
in boyhood were all the instruction ever received ; yet 
^hey fell on such soil that, had the child been reared 
among musical people, we are tempted to believe that 
his passion for production would have found its outlet 
in sonatas rather than sonnets — in symphonic poems 
rather than sea-voyages in verse. Self-instruction on 
the piano (not altogether unlike the solitary . methods 
by which Mr. Payne has preferred to master more 
than half of the languages at his command) has made 
it possible — incredible as it may seem — for him to inter- 
pret, not by ear, but from the piano score, the most 
complicated orchestral works of Liszt, Berlioz and 
Wagner. The precise effect of so persistent an absorp- 
tion of musical ideas — which must have been carried 
on for many years to reach a like result — may be diffi- 
cult to determine ; but the existence of the habit or 
need is sufficient to account for the poet's complete — 
we had almost said unique — mastery of metrical form. 
More than the half-century of delving into poetry 
ancient and modern, it explains what we venture to 
regard as the " musical content " of his admirably 
modulated verse, embracing elements more definite than 
mere sweetness and facility. 

In literature his earliest attempt was made at school, 
when, a boy of nine or ten, he translated into English 
verse, no longer preserved, a number of the odes of 
Horace. Before he was twelve he had celebrated 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Caesar's conquest of Britain in lays more or less in- 
spired by Macaulay's. Not only were these outpourings 
and those of succeeding years allowed to perish, but by 
far the greater number of the various translations made 
between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one were con- 
demned to oblivion. Among these were a metrical 
translation of Dante's entire work in verse ; the second 
part of Goethe's " Faust," also his " Hermann und 
Dorothea " ; Lessing's " Nathan der Weise," and 
Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso." Innumerable shorter 
poems were rendered into English from the German, 
old and modern French, Provencal, Italian, Spanish, 
and Portuguese ; but of the total mass only nine lyrics 
of Goethe and Heine, given in the Villon edition, have 
been thought worthy of preservation. Wishing to lay 
stress upon Mr. Payne's inventive faculty, we have in- 
cluded no translations in this volume. On the other 
hand, we have selected, in further proof of his versa- 
tility, as well as of his hold upon foreign tongues, 
whether acquired in the closet or elsewhere, three 
original effusions, two in French, the third in Italian, 
fashioned, like nearly every stanza he has composed in 
his native tongue, not in cold blood, but at white heat, 
without labour and with the minimum of correction. 

Acting upon a nature thus alive to the things of the 
intellect, thus sufficient to itself, the opposite tendencies 
of his family — of his father, in particular — could not fail 
to add flame to fuel. The nine-year-old boy, drawn 
to the dictionary by the witchery of word -analysis, is 
warned that literature will never bake bread ; and the 
omnivorous reader's allowance is withheld lest any part 
of it should be spent for books. In winter he is for- 
bidden to "segregate himself" for purposes of study; 
to enforce the decree, fire and light are denied him. At 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

the age of fourteen the Mozart of letters, with the sensi- 
tive ear and intuitive grasp of a born philologist, and 
with all his ambitions now turned in the direction of 
language, is taken once for all out of school, to fill 
various positions — as printer's devil in a provincial news- 
paper establishment, as usher in two schools, then as 
clerk in a solicitor's office. Everywhere extreme diffi- 
dence engenders suffering, until in those phases of the 
law lying nearest to literature — namely, chancery and 
conveyancing — his brain and temperament find an occu- 
pation in which they no longer appear at a disadvantage. 
Enabled finally, with the assistance of friends, to found 
the well-known Villon Society, he succeeded in bringing 
the work of his strenuous later years before a cosmo- 
politan and keenly appreciative public. In his own 
words, in " The Building of the Dream " : — 

"And of a truth, no thing 
Was wanting to the squire, but yet one field 

Of fight, ere on his shield 
The glorious blazon of a knight should shine — 

Before the golden sign 
Of chivalry should glance at either heel. 

And the ennobling steel 
Fall softly on his shoulder." 

To take the lines literally, Mr. Payne's family name, 
as borne by his father, Mr. Hawkins Payne, was knightly 
enough, for the Paynes are descended from the bold 
navigator and admiral of Elizabeth's England and 
Kingsley's " Westward Ho ! " — Sir John Hawkins. The 
old Devonshire family bore the name of Hawkins until 
marriage with an heiress induced a remote ancestor to 
add the name of Payne to Hawkins. In revolt against 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

affectation, the present generation has dropped the name 
of Hawkins altogether. 

Early and late in the heart of the minstrel the passion 
for translation has come near superseding the poetic 
faculty. In youth, no less than under the pressure of a 
task like that of turning the whole of Hafiz into English, 
it threatened to take full possession of him. It will not 
be unpleasing to Americans to know that a minute volume 
of the first twelve essays of Emerson, still treasured 
among Mr. Payne's dearest books, rekindled in the 
youth of nineteen the smouldering flame of ideality, in- 
clining him definitely toward creative work. As a poet, 
Emerson, like Byron, failed to make the faintest impres- 
sion upon him. Keats and Shelley appealed to him, and 
his liking for unsubstantial themes has brought him into 
superficial comparison with them. But while their 
poems afford scarcely a single domestic touch, John 
Payne, in at least one ballad, that of " Isobel," and in at 
least one of the " London City Poems " — " The Plague " 
— has treated a domestic situation with the utmost 
tenderness and felicity. The poets to whom he acknow- 
ledges an actual debt are, first of all, the singer — 

" Whose radiant brow is crowned 
With triple coronals ineffable, 
Attesting the assay of heaven and hell," 
and 

" The glad master standing with one foot 
On earth and one foot in the Faery land," 

of the postlude to the narrative poem " Salvestra." After 
Dante's sway and Spenser's, he owns that of minds so 
diverse as Drummond of Hawthornden, Henry Vaughan, 
Landor (in the " Hellenics ") Wordsworth, Heine (whom 
at one time he knew by heart), and Browning (in " Men 



INTRODUCTION xv 

and Women," " Paracelsus," and the plays). Repelled 
by Swinburne's earliest work, he came later to place him 
next to Shakespeare. Before the publication of "The 
Masque of Shadows," the influence of Emerson had given 
way to that of Schopenhauer, and this in its turn led to 
the study of the Vedantic philosophy of ancient India, 
which eventually became the poet's chief mental and 
moral guide. The " blood-devouring way " of the 
sonnet to Omar Kheyyam is the vedantist's thorny 
path "from talk to fact," of quatrains 549 and 532. 
The " new and valued friend " of the " Epilogue to 
the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night" 
was Sir Richard F. Burton. The " Dead Master " of 
the Threnody was Landor. The amico of the sonnet, 
" With a Copy of the Divina Commedia," was the poet, 
Arthur W. E. O'Shaughnessy. 

That the coarseness of an impartial unexpurgated 
rendering of Oriental masterpieces never found its way 
into the poet's own songs and stories — that the hand 
of Villon's translator has escaped being endued with 
that it works in is clear from "The Civilian's" some- 
what old-fashioned — but to the general reader always 
acceptable — statement that " Songs of Life and Death " 
might be put into any school-girl's hands, "not only 
without danger, but with the greatest advantage." 

No estimate of Mr. Payne's work, either as scholar 
or poet, would be complete without reference to the 
spell that the intellect and atmosphere of France — her 
language, her scenery, her great writers and foster- 
children, from Rabelais to Gluck, and from Gautier 
to Auguste de Gobineau, have laid upon him. The 
newly edited poems bear the inscription : — 

"A la Memoire de mon bien cher et bien amerement 
regrette St^phane Mallarm^, Esprit Exquis et Coeur 

b 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

d'Or, je dedie I'edition definitive de ces fleurs de 
tristesse qu'il aimait quand-meme." 

In a letter to America we come upon these words : — 

" Your long-delayed letter finds me out, at last, on 
my return from the Ardennes, where I have passed my 
summer holiday under my favourite conditions, in the 
midst of exquisite natural and wild beauty, and without 
seeing an English face or speaking anything but French 
or German — living, in fact, with the natives and nature." 

This spontaneous tribute is offset, in another letter, by 
one equally glowing to his mother-tongue : — 

" My life is given up now to the building up of enormous 
monuments of English prose, like the " Nights," all that 
I can now do for that noble English language that I love 
with an irrepressible affection and reverence, so much 
so that I might wish my epitaph to be Linguam Anglicam 
dllexit (He loved the English tongue)." 

In " London City Poems," the " Requiem for Our 
Dead in South Africa," the humorous " Dopper's 
Lament," and the sonnet "England's Hope," love of 
country and pride of race are overwhelmingly manifest. 
Other evidence is not lacking that the student of past ages 
has somehow felt the time-spirit fervently as any man of 
his period, going beyond the Germans in his instantaneous 
recognition of Richard Wagner, both as mediasvalist and 
musician. Perhaps the twin voices of poetry and prophecy 
were never more happily blended than in the prelude to 
the volume " Songs of Life and Death " : — 

" Be not disheartened, O our Zoroaster, 
O mage of our new music-world of fire — 

All at thy spring shall drink and know it sweet ; 
All the false temples shall fall down before thee, 
Ay — and the false gods crumble at thy feet." 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

These dedicatory words were written, as Mr. Payne 
observes, in 1867-68, "when to mention Wagner as 
a great musician was well-nigh to incur suspicion of 
madness." The vivid lay of "Sir Floris" also was 
dedicated to Wagner, and there is an early sonnet 
entitled, "Bride-Night: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde — 
Act II., scene 2." 

Like many another Londoner, engrossed until near 
life's summit with toil more or less uncongenial, Mr. 
Payne constantly betrays a pathetic worship of nature 
in her every mood and manifestation ; as in " London 
City Poems " : — 

" Yet the flowers of May 
Bloomed in the shaded woodlands of his soul. 

He read ; and he was ankle-deep in grass. 

He read ; and fragrance of the scented pines 
Rose round his spirit." 

So also in " Vere Novo " : — 

" Out in my little garden 
The crocus is aflame ; 

The winter's woes are over : 

My cats upon the wall, 
Gruflf, Top, Shireen and Rover, 

Are basking, one and all " 

— lines to which is appended a bit of history : " Since 
the writing of this poem my little angora cat, Rover, 
has died in her tenth year, to the infinite regret of 
all who knew her. She was the most loving and 
engaging of creatures, far more intelligent than the 
majority of human beings, and was less to be described 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

as a cat than as half-a-dozen pounds of affection done 
up in tabby fluff. As Burton says, in the delightful 
* We and our Neighbours,' — one of the series of homely 
masterpieces by the late Mrs. Beecher Stowe, — * One's 
pets will die, and it breaks one's heart.' " That Mr. 
Payne has — in Schumann's elastic phrase — no kinder- 
scenen is remarkable, in view of his intense love for 
children and animals, which — according to a saying of 
Charles Alston Collins, Dickens's son-in-law — borders 
upon insanity. 

In touching upon a few of the poems most salient 
features, if we mention first their melodious sweetness 
it is equally because, when all is said, we believe the 
singing faculty to be a poet's chief requisite, and because, 
in the verse under consideration, the musical element 
already noted is, upon the whole, the most constant 
and characteristic. 

Nor would it be easy to ignore the high finish of 
Payne's work, no less sustained in his earliest than in 
his latest poems, and somehow conveying a sense of 
elaboration unspoilt by conscious effort. " The Masque 
of Shadows" is singularly free from the errors and 
inequalities common to young writers and first ventures. 
Mr. Payne seems always to have written with ease, and 
to have avoided lapses like those of Wordsworth, 
Swinburne and Rossetti into laboured and cumbrous 
phraseology. That one or more of his critics should 
have been misled into making the charge of artificiality 
is matter for wonder to at least two readers, who know 
the history of the poems, and are satisfied that however 
methodical the scholar''s mental processes, the poet's 
own utterances are nothing more nor less than wild- 
flowers, whose purity and spontaneity are due to the 
fertile soil whence they sprang. As well say of the 



INTRODUCTION xi'x 

"mariposas" found in the foothills of California, that 
they owe to excessive cultivation their perfection of 
tint, their tilted grace, iridescence and butterfly down ! 
Nor is complexity in the " butterfly tulip " of the Pacific 
coast irreconcilable with a peculiar simplicity not 
retained, as a rule, by the pampered guests of garden 
and hothouse. Extreme simplicity of language, alter- 
nating with an exuberance of description suggesting 
and rivalling Spenser's, is equally the mark of the poems, 
narrative or lyrical, and seems to us one of their main 
elements of strength. The number of words of one 
syllable is everywhere noticeable. Whole stanzas will 
be found at random, with sometimes a single word 
other than monosyllabic, sometimes none ; as in the 
wonderfully well-knit " Rime of Redemption " : — 

" The night is wide : they ride and ride ; 
The lights grow bright and near ; 
There comes a wail upon the gale, 
And eke a descant clear. 

There comes a plain of souls in pain, 

And eke a high sweet song, 
As of some fate whose grief is great, 

But yet whose hope is strong." 

According to the Westminster Review : — 

" Mr. Payne still goes to the store-house of our elder 
English poets for their old expressive words which we 
have forgotten, and sets them with fresh beauty to 
modern thought." 

To quote the Saturday Review : — 

" * Sir Fioris ' abounds with words of curious and 
semi-French archaism ; but these are never dragged 
in ; they suit the general effect, and clearly come from 



XX INTRODUCTION 

the overflow of a memory steeped in the romance 
literature from which they are drawn." 

This very supersaturation, reinforced by the judg- 
ment of a linguist who is no pedant, explains his not 
infrequent use of rime riche, common enough in classic 
French but less common in English, notwithstanding 
our mother- tongue's scant supply of rhyme-material. 
Yet it is in the simplest rather than in more or less 
intricate versification that Mr. Payne employs rime riche 
— evidently for its own sake, and not from labour- 
saving motives. Thus sea rhymes with see in the limpid 
quatrains of "The House of Sorrow," and light is 
linked with delight : — 

" The tender ecstasy of sad delight 
He has seen pictured there 
Upon the canvas of the lingering light, 
Under the evening air." 

To the charge of habitual melancholy the poet him- 
self pleads guilty in many places, as in the sonnet 
"Ignis Fatuus" : — 

" My soul is like some pale phantasmal light 
That flickers o'er a marsh of mystery, 
And with its baleful phosphorescency 
Reaches long hands of blue into the night. 
It may not give the fair world to men's sight, 
Nor rescue back the lovely things that be 
Out of the shrouding gloom," 

Here, however, he does his own temperament such 
scant justice that we are moved to dwell upon the 
many long passages and entire lyrics in which the 
minor thread is snapped or overlaid. What, for instance, 
could be brighter, more vivacious, more spring-like in 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

quality than "Major Cadence"; the rondel, "Kiss 
me, Sweetheart " ; the rococo, " Straight and swift the 
swallows fly"; the carol, "Bells of Gold" in "The 
Fountain of Youth " ; the lovely villanelle, " The air 
is white with snowflakes," "A Birthday Song," or 
the magnificent " Chant Royal of the God of Love " ? 
The beautiful barcarolle, "A Bacchic of Spring," 
"Trinitas Trinitatum," the sonnet "Indian Isle," and 
numerous others are also wholly in the major key ; 
so for the most part is the racy folk-tale of "Sir 
Winfrith." In many of the very latest pieces, like 
" Dust to Dust," " Vere Novo," and " Nocturn," is 
a new note between exaltation and resignation, cul- 
minating in the closing words of " Evensong " : — 

" Work wrought, way wended, 
Duty done." 

Doubtless, the indefatigable inventor and interpreter 
will never be able wholly to overcome the life-regret 
that despite the volume and variety of his original work, 
it has after all amounted but to flowerage in the dark, 
unfostered by that degree of the world's sympathy 
without which art cannot thrive, and giving that world 
no intimation of the plant's real capacity. 

Apparently the main reason for the undercurrent of 
sadness encountered in the poems is to be found in the 
pathetic outpouring, " The Grave of my Songs ; " but 
there are other clues to the poet's life of mediaeval 
seclusion and contemplation. Setting aside the question 
of temperament, loss of health and of a beloved com- 
panion {vide " A Christmas Vigil "), above all, the after- 
eiFects of early repression, have cast a shadow calling 
irresistibly to mind the bitter complaint of Deumier : — 
" L'on meurt en plein bonheur de son malheur passe." 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

While it would be useless to deny the pessimistic 
tendencies of verse which, like that of Matthew Arnold, 
sums up the fermentation and discontent of a restless 
period, yet in "The Ballad of Shameful Death," and 
its quasi-counterpart, " Quia Multum Amavit," also in 
" Night Watches " and in " Areopagitica " — a sermon 
omitted with reluctance, chiefly on account of its length 
— there is abundant evidence, not only that the recluse is 
no misanthrope, but that in certain moods he becomes the 
spokesman of the people. No reader, it seems to us, 
could look below the surface of " Shadow-Soul " without 
realising that a broad humanity is the essential element 
underlying all the poems, and inevitably, if rarely, 
breaking into appeal and protest : — 

" Haply one day these songs of mine 

Some world-worn mortal may console 

With savour of the bitter wine 

Of tears crushed out from a man's dole ; 

And he may say, tears in his eyne, 

There ivas great lo've in this man's soul ! " 

To those who loved Mr. Warner, and remember 
his passion for long walks — the last a lonely one of eight 
miles, ending in his sudden death — it may be interesting 
to know that in his copy of " Songs of Life and Death," 
another stanza in the same poem was pencil-marked : — 

" Sometimes, too, as I walk alone, 

The mists roll up before my eyes, 
And unto me strange lights are shown, 

And many a dream of sapphire skies ; 
The world and all its cares are gone : 

I walk awhile in Paradise." 

The main divisions of the new " Poetical Works " 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

consist of a first volume beginning with "The Romaunt 
of Sir Floris " and containing only the longer narratives, 
new and old, like " The Fountain of Youth," an early 
American subject ; " Lautrec," dealing with vampires, 
a theme fascinating to the antiquary ; and " Salvestra," 
founded upon a brief passage in the " Decameron." 
The second volume, beginning with " London City 
Poems " and closing with a few translations, contains 
a group of " Ballads and Romances " covering all 
the shorter narratives, and followed by " Sonnets," 
" Exotica," and " Songs of Life and Death." Among 
the " Exotica " two amusing ballades in the French 
language are addressed to Villon and to Mr. Payne's 
critics, the latter having the refrain : — 

" J'ai mes fideles de Paris." 

The ballades would have preceded and followed the 
complete translation of Villon's poems, had not one 
composed and contributed by Theodore de Banville 
unexpectedly filled their place. Among the "Songs" 
are many new ones not written before 1902. Indeed, 
it is difficult for the editorial pen to keep pace with the 
poet's — driven even at this writing, in 1903, by a 
pressure not unlike the love-impulse in his own " Aloe 
Blossom " : — 

" But as I waited, suddenly there came 
Within me as the flowering of a flame, 
And like the mystic bud that bursts to meet 
Its hundredth spring with thunder and acclaim, 
Love flowered upon me terrible and sweet." 

In any case, the complete edition could hardly be 
regarded definitive after the appearance, in 1902, of the 
slender sad-coloured pamphlet, " The Descent of the 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

Dove, and Other Poems ; being a Supplement to the 
Poetical Works of John Payne"; and still later, in 
1903, the slender volume "Vigil and Vision," thrown 
off at white heat and containing remarkable verse — 
several examples of which are to be found in this 
edition. 

Lamenting limits that compel us to exclude "The 
Masque of Shadows"" (with a motif recalling an in- 
tensely modern piece of music, — the gruesome " Dance 
Macabre " of Saint-Saens, but with a consummation old 
as the " Symposium " of Plato) ; likewise " Hymn to 
the Night," "Vocation Song," "Dust to Dust," 
" Nocturn," " In Memoriam, Oliver Madox Brown," 
"A Last Lullaby," "Bird-Peep," and "A Song of 
Roses," we would suggest to the reader such communion 
with the poems here given as an American enjoyed in 
a French garden-close : — 

"We went to Aix-les-Bains for six vast weeks, and 
stayed at the most charming little quiet Hotel d'ltalie, 
that had a big lovely garden at the back, all arbours 
and shade-trees and flowers, shut in by high walls, and 
hushed as any churchyard. Our medical director for 
the baths was Dr. Casalis, who had a very interesting 
English wife. One day I asked him if he had any 
English books. He replied that he had a few, among 
them a volume of the poetry of John Payne, whom he 
knew ; and then went on to give me some account 
of him. As I had never before heard of Mr. Payne, 
all this added to the curiosity with which I borrowed 
his 'Songs of Life and Death,' and retired to the 
garden to read it. There, stretched upon a com- 
fortable divan, in the shade of a grape-vine arbour, 
where purpling clusters hung temptingly above, I read it 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

through and through before I laid it down. It was a 
revelation. I became at once a lover of Mr. Payne, 
full constant and not as one — 

*' ' That loves and loves not in one short hour's span.' " 

It is no doubt in some such spirit that the poems of 
John Payne must be approached to be appreciated. 
Like their author, they make slow headway against the 
hurry and discord of modern existence. In communion 
less intimate they are hardly of a kind to yield up their 
true aroma. 

LUCY ROBINSON. 

(Lucy Catlin Bull.) 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION .... 

Dedication to Richard Wagner 

Sir Erwin's Questing 

The Fountain of Youth 

From "Aspect and Prospect" . 

From "The Plague" 

Quia Multum Amavit 

The Ballad of Shameful Death 

The Rime of Redemption . 

Into the Enchanted Land 

From " In Armida's Garden " . 

From "The Pact of the Twin Gods" 

Chant Royal of the God of Love 

Rondel ...... 

Madrigal Gai ..... 

Madrigal Triste .... 

The King's Sleep .... 

The Dead Master .... 

A Funeral Song for Th^ophile Gautier 
Prelude to Hafiz .... 

Epilogue to the Book of the Thousand 
and One Night .... 

The Ballad of Isobel 

Barcarolle ..... 

Rondeau Redouble .... 



Ni 



PAGE 
-XXV 

1 

5 

1 1 

43 
45 
47 
54 
6 1 

77 
86 
89 
94 

97 
98 

99 

lOI 

108 

115 

118 

121 
123 

137 
141 



XXVlll 



CONTENTS 



Rococo 

A Birthday Song 

VlLLANELLE 

Rondeau 

Rondeau 

Bassarid's Horn . 

From "Requiem for our Dead in South Africa' 

The Marsh-King's Daughter 

The Westward Sailing .... 

From "Cadences" Major .... 

Pantoum ....... 

The Ballad of the King's Daughter 

The Ballad of May Margaret . 

The House of Sorrow .... 

Shadow-Soul ...... 

Double Ballad of the Singers of the Time 
The Grave of My Songs .... 



PAGE 

142 

143 
145 

147 
148 
149 
150 
153 

156 

162 

163 

167 

171 

17s 
181 

190 
192 



SONNETS— 

J. B. Corot (Died 22nd February 1875). . 199 
A St^phane Mallarme .... 200 

Hyde Park ....... 201 

Sarvarthasiddha-Buddha . . . 202-5 

Con UN Esemplare della Divina Commedia . 206 
Translation of the Foregoing, with a Copy 

of the Divina Commedia . . . 207 

Omar Kheyyam ...... 208 

Ad Dantem . .... 209 

With a Copy of Henry Vaughan's Sacred 

Poems . . . . . .210 



CONTENTS 


xxix 


SONNETS— (continued) 






PAGE 


Beatrice ...... 


21 I 


Indian Summer ..... 212-15 


Tropic Flower ..... 


2X6 


Evocation (second sonnet) . 


217 


Femme Fellah de Landelle 


2X8 


Indian Isle ...... 


219 


Life Unlived ..... 


220 


England's Hope: Kitchener of Khartoum 


221 


Angel Death 


222 


Ad ZoIlos ...... 


223 


Exit 


224 



DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 

OF THE VOLUME " SONGS OF LIFE AND DEATH " 

February 1872. 

Master and chief of all for whom the singers 
Strain with full bosoms and ecstatic throats, 

For whom the strings beneath the flying fingers, 
The sackbuts and the clarions, yield their notes, — 

Lord over all for whom the tymbals thunder. 
For whom the harps throb like the distant sea, 

For whom the shrill sweet flutings cleave in sunder 
The surges of the strings that meet and flee, — 

O strong sweet soul, whose life is as a mountain 
Hymned round about with stress of spirit-choirs. 

Whose mighty song leaps sunward like a fountain. 
Reaching for lightnings from celestial fires, — 

burning heart and tender, highest, mildest, 
Nightingale-throated, with the eagle's wing, — 

This sheaf of songs, culled where the ways are wildest 
And the shade deepest, to thy feet I bring. 

1 hail thee as from many hearts that cherish, 

Serve and keep white thy thought within their shrines. 
Where the flame fades not, though its lustre perish. 
Midmost the lurid and the stormy signs. 

A 



2 DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 

I greet thee as from those great mates departed 
Who first taught Song to know the ways of Soul, 

Fit harbingers of thee, the eagle-hearted. 
Saw in the art the new sun-planets roll. 

I greet thee with a promise and a cheering, — 
I, that have loved thee many weary years, 

I, that, with eyes strained for the dawn's appearing, 
Have clung to thee for hope and healing tears ; 

I, that am nought, whose weakling voice has in it 
The shrill sole sadness of one wailing note ; 

No nightingale I, but a sad-voiced linnet. 
Piping thin ditties from a bleeding throat ; 

I — since the masters lift no voice to-thee-ward 
To stay thy battle in the weary time — 

Send forth for thee these weak-winged songs to seaward. 
To bear to thee their freight of idle rhyme. 

Ah, how weak-voiced and little worth, my master ! 

Yet haply, as a lark-song on the breeze. 
That, winging through the air, black with disaster, 

Heartens some exile pacing by the seas. 

So even mine, my weak and unskilled singing 
May smite thine ear with no unpleasing notes. 

What time the shrill sounds of the fight are ringing 
About thee and the clamour of dull throats. 

And peradventure (for least love is grateful) 
The humble song may, for a little while. 

Smooth from thy brow the sadness high and fateful, 
Call to thy lips the rare and tender smile. 



DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 3 

My harmonies are harmonies of sadness, 
My light is but as starlight on the wane : 

Far nobler bards shall cheer thee with their gladness ; 
I bring thee but the song-pulse of my pain. 

Be not disheartened, O our Zoroaster, 
O mage of our new music- world of fire ! 

Thou art not all unfriended, O my master ! 
Let not the great heart fail thee for desire. 

What matter though the storm-wind round thee rages. 
Though men judge weakly with imperfect sight ? 

O master-singer of the heroic ages, 

Each dawn is brighter with the appointed light. 

Hate's echoes on the inconstant air but languish, 
Win not within the world's true heart to be, — 

Faint wails for us of far-ofF souls in anguish. 
That chide their own sick selves in all they see. 

Thine is the Future — hardly theirs the Present, 
The flowerless days that put forth leaf and die — 

Theirs that lie steeped in idle days and pleasant, 
Letting the pageant of the years pass by. 

For the days hasten when shall all adore thee. 
All at thy spring shall drink and know it sweet ; 

All the false temples shall fall down before thee. 
Ay, and the false gods crumble at thy feet. 

Then shall men set thee in their holy places. 
Hymn thee with anthems of remembering ; 

Faiths shall spring up and blossom in thy traces. 
Thick as the violets cluster round the Spring. 



4 DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 

And then, perchance, when, in the brighter ages, 
Men shall awake and know the god they scorned 

And mad with grief, grave upon marble pages 
(That therewithal the Future may be warned) 

The tale of their remorse and shame undying, 

They, coming where thy name has kept these sweet, 

— These idle songs of mine, — shall set with sighing 
My name upon the marble at thy feet ; 

For that, when all made mock of and denied thee, 
Seeing not the portent and the fiery sword, 

I, from my dream, in the mid-heaven descried thee, 
Saw and confessed thee, knew and named thee Lord. 



SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 

" Oh, whither, whither ridest thou, Sir Erwin ? 
The glitter of the dawn is in the sky ; 

And I hear the laverock singing, 

Where the silken corn is springing 
And the green-and-gold of summer's on the rye." 

" O lady fair, I ride toward the setting ; 
For the glamour of the West is on my heart, 
And I hear a dream-voice callinp; 
To the land where dews are falling 
And the blossoms of the springtide ne'er depart." 

" Oh, what, oh, what thing seekest thou. Sir Erwin ? 
Is life no longer pleasant to thy soul ? 

Am I no more heart's dearest. 

Though the summer skies are clearest 
And the gold of June is fresh on copse and knoll ? "" 

" O sweet, I seek the land where love is holy 
And the bloom of youth is ever on the flowers ; 

The land where joy is painless 

And the eyes' delight is stainless 
And the break of hope faints never in the weary 
noontide hours." 



SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 

" Oh, rest awhile, oh, rest awhile. Sir Erwin ! 
The hills are yet ungilded by the sun. 

Oh, tarry till the morning 

Have chased the mists of dawning 
And the weariness of noon be past and done ! " 

" O lady fair, I may not tarry longer ! 
The sun is climbing fast above the grey 

And I hear the trumpets blowing, 

Where the eastern clouds are glowing 
And the mists of night are breaking from the city 
of the day." 

Far out into the greenwood rides Sir Erwin, 
Oh, far into the wild wood rideth he ! 

And there meet him sisters seven, 

When the sun is high in heaven 
And the gold of noon is bright on flower and tree. 

Oh, wonder-lovely maidens were the seven. 
With mantles of the crimson and the green. 

With red-gold rings and girdles 

And sea-blue shoes and kirtles. 
And eyes that shone like cornflowers in their locks' 
corn-golden sheen. 

" Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's 

dearest ! 
And we will sing thee wonder-lovely songs, 

And we will strew with roses 

The place where thy repose is 
And teach thee all the rapture that unto love belongs." 



SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 7 

" Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's 

dearest I 
We have full many a secret of delight : 
Thy day shall be one sweetness 
Of love in its completeness 
And the nightingale shall sing to thee the whole 
enchanted night." 

" Oh, woe is me ! I may not stay, fair maidens ; 
My quest is for a country far and wild ; 

The land where springs the Iris,i 

Where the end of all desire is 
And the thought of love lives ever undefiled." 

" Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's 

dearest ! 
Thou wilt wear thy youth to eld in such a quest : 

For it lies beyond the setting. 

In the land of the Forgetting, 
In the bosom of the everlasting rest ! " 

Far on into the greenwood rides Sir Erwin, 
Oh, far into the wild wood rideth he ! 

And he sees a fair wife sitting. 

At the hour when light is flitting 
And the gold of sunset gathers on the sea. 

Oh, very fair and stately was her seeming 
And very sweet and dreamful were her eyes ! 

And as she sat a-weaving 

She sang a song of grieving. 
Full low and sweet to anguish, mixt with sighs. 

* There is a legend that the more distant-seeming end of the 
rainbow begins in Fairyland. 



SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 

" Oh, tell me what thou weavest there, fair lady, 
I prithee tell me quickly what thou art ! " 
"I am more fair than seeming, 
And I weave the webs of dreaming 
For the solace of the world-awearied heart." 



" Oh, prithee tell me, tell to me, fair lady. 
What song is that thou singest and so sweet ? ■' 

" I sing the songs of sorrow 

That is golden on the morrow. 
And I charm with them the sad hours' leaden feet. 



" Oh, light thee down and dwell with me, heart's 

dearest ! 
Thou hast wandered till thy face is furrowed deep ; 

But I will charm earth's cumbers 

From the rose-leaves of thy slumbers 
And will fold thee in the lotus-leaves of sleep." 



" Oh, woe is me ! oh, woe is me, fair lady ! 
A hand of magic draws me on my quest 

Toward the land of story. 

Where glows the sunset-glory 
And the light of love fades never from the West." 



" Oh, light thee down and dwell with me, heart"'s 

dearest ! 
Thine eyes will lose their lustre by the way ; 

For it lies far out to yonder. 

Where the setting sun dips under 
And the funeral pyres are burning for the day." 



'% 



SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 9 

Oh, far thorough the greenwood rides Sir Erwin, 

Oh, far out of the wild wood rideth he ! 
And he comes where waves are plashing 
And the wild white crests are dashing 

On the pebbles of a grey and stormy sea. 

Far down toward the tide-flow rides Sir Erwin, 
Oh, far adown the shingle rideth he ! 

And he sees a shallop rocking 

Upon the wild waves' flocking. 
And an ancient steersman sitting in the lee. 

Oh, very weird and gruesome was that steersman. 
With hair that mocked for white the driven snow ! 

The light of some strange madness 

Was in his eyes' grey sadness 
And he showed like some pale ghost of long ago. 

"Oh, sail with me I oh, sail with me, Sir Erwin ! 
Thou hast wandered in thy questing far enough. 

I will bring thee where Love's ease is 

For ever, though the breezes 
Blow rudely and the broad green way be rough." 

" Reach hand to me, reach hand to me, old steersman ! 
I will sail with thee for questing o'er the main. 

Although thine eyes look coldly, 

I will dare the venture boldly ; 
For I weary for an ending of my pain." 

Oh, long they rode on billows, in the glory 
Of the gold and crimson standards of the West ! 

So came they, in the setting,; 

To the land of the Forgetting, 
Where the weary and the woeful arc at rest. 



lo SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 

" Oh, what can be this land that is so peaceful, 
That lies beyond the setting of the sun ? 

I hear a dream-bell ringing 

And I hear a strange sweet singing 
And the tender gold of twilight's on the dun. 

" Oh, what are these fair forms that float toward me 
And what are these that hold me by the hand, 

As if they long had sought me ? 

And what art thou hast brought me 
O'er the ocean to this dream-enchanted strand ? " 

" Fair knight, this is the land of the Hereafter, 
And the name that men do know me by is Death : 

For the love from life that's flying. 

Lives ever for the dying 
And the stains of it are purged with 'scape of breath." 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

A ROMANCE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

Suggested by a passage in 
Antonio de Herrera's Historia 
General de las Indias Occiden- 
tales. 

We sailed from Cadiz, Perez, Bias and I, 
Bound westward for the golden Indian seas, 
One Christmas morning in the thirtieth year 
Since Colon furrowed first the Western main. 
Three old sea-dogs we were, well tried and tanned 
In battle and hard weather ; they had sailed 
With the great Admiral in his first emprise 
And I with stout de Leon, when he flung 
The banner of the kingdoms to the breeze 
Upon the sunny shores of Florida. 
We had in our adventurings amassed 
Some store of gold, enough for our require, 
By stress of toilful days and careful nights 
And dint of dogged labour and hard knocks ; 
And now the whitening harvest of our heads 
Might well have monished us to slacken sail 
And turn our thoughts toward the port of death. 
Leaving the furtherance of our emprise 
Unto the fresher hands of younger men. 
But he, who long has used to ride the deep 
And scent the briny breezes of the main. 



12 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Inhales a second nature with the breath 
Of that unresting element and it, 
With all its spells of reckless venturousness, 
Grows subtly blended with his inmost soul 
And will not let him rest upon the land. 
And so we three, grey-bearded, ancient men, 
Furrowed with years, but yet with hearts as stout 
And sinews as well strung as many a youth 
In whom the hot blood rages, launched again 
Into the olden course and bent our sails 
Once more toward the setting. Not that we 
Were bitten by that fierce and senseless craze 
And hunger for red gold, that drove the folk 
By myriads to the fruitful Western shores 
And made the happy valleys ring with war. 
Plains waste with fire and red with seas of blood : 
A nobler, if a more unreal aim 
Allured our hopes toward the Occident, 
And thawed the frost of age within our veins. 

I had with Leon companied, when he 
Sought vainly for the Isle of Bimini, 
And heard the Indians of the Cuban coast 
Tell how, some fifty years agone, a tribe 
Had sallied thence to seek that golden strand, 
Where springs the Fountain of Eternal Youth, 
And, finding it, had lost the memory 
Of all their native ties and lingered there, 
Lapt in an endless dream of Paradise. 

Oft had the wondrous legend filled my sense 
To intermittent longing, though, what time 
The fire of youth was fresh within my veins, 
I gave scant heed to it ; but when my head 
Grew white with winter's snows, the ancient fire 
Flamed up again within me and my soul 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 13 

Yearned unappeasably toward the West, 

Where welled the wondrous chrism. At my heat 

These two my comrades kindled to like warmth 

And with like aim we fitted out a ship 

And turned her head toward the setting sun, 

Holding it well to let none know our thought. 

But giving out we sought the general goal 

And went to work the mines of Paria. 

The Christmas bells rang cheerily, as we loosed 

Our carvel from its moorings, and the sky 

Shone blue with blithest omen. So we stood 

Adown the harbour, and with favouring winds 

Came speedily to Ferro, where we took 

New store of meat and drink, and, sailing on. 

Had not long lost from sight the topmost peak 

When some enchantment seemed to fall upon 

And paralyse the water and the air ; 

And glad winds dropped, the sea fell down to glass 

And the gold sun flamed stirless in the sky. 

For some score days we felt no breath of air 

And heard no break of ripples, but we lay 

And sweltered in the grip of that fierce heat. 

And so we drifted, in the weary calm, 

A slow foot forward and a slow foot back, 

Upon the long low folded slopes of sea. 

Until, when all left hope and looked for death, 

A swift sweet breeze sprang up and drove us on, 

Across foam-spangled ripples, through a waste 

Of wet weed-tangle ; and anon the air 

Grew faint with balmy flower-breaths ; a white bird 

Lit like a dream upon our sea-browned sail 

And brought with it the promise of the land. 

Softer and balmier grew the breeze, and thick 

And thicker came the signs of ncaring shores ; 



14 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

And so, one morning, from the early mists 

A green-coned island rose up in our way 

And our glad hearts were conscious of the land. 

Landing, we met with Spaniards armed and clothed. 

Who brought us to the chief town of the isle. 

That lay snow-white within a blaze of green. 

It was New Spain, and having there refreshed 

Our weary bodies with a grateful rest 

Among the pleasant places of the isle. 

We trimmed our sails anew toward the West 

And steered into the distance with stout hearts. 

Through many a winding maze of wooded aits 
And channels where the lush boughs canopied 
The lucent waters in their sanded bed, 
We passed and smelt sweet savours of strange flowers, 
That filled the forests with a blaze of bloom. 
This coasting Cuba, and the last land passed. 
Where the white headland rushed into the deep 
And strove in vain to reach some kindred land, 
Lost in the infinite distance, fields of green 
Glittered and broke to surges, far and wide. 
Until the eye lost vision. Nothing feared. 
We bade farewell to all the terraced slopes 
And fragrant woodlands and with fluttering sails. 
Stretched out into the undiscovered seas. 
Fair winds soon drove us out of sight of land 
And in a sweet, bright glory of June warmth. 
Attempered by lithe breezes, did we cleave. 
For many days, the slow and pearled surge, 
Fair heaven o'er us of a wildflower's blue. 
With now and then a trail of golden cloud. 
Feathered with silver, sloping o'er its bell 
Of windless azure, and a jasper sea. 
Full of all glints and plays of jewelled light. 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 15 

Fishes of diamond and seaweed trails, 
Ruby and emerald, that bore wide blooms 
Of white and purple. Some enchanted land 
Lay for our sight beneath that crystal dome 
Of hyaline inverted toward the sky, 
Drinking the soft light with so whole a bliss 
That some new radiance ever woke in it. 

So journeyed we for many a golden day 
And many a night enchanted, till, at last. 
One night, the sunset lay across the West, 
In one great sheet of bright and awful gold. 
And would not fade for twilight. Through the air 
The hours fled past toward midnight ; but the sun 
Was stayed by some new Joshua and the West 
Still seemed the land of the Apocalypse, 
Emblazoning the future of our hopes. 
We all did marvel at the miracle, 
And some began to quake for very fear ; 
But Perez lifted up his voice and said, 
" Friends, this is e'en the very sign of God, 
To show us, of His mercy, we shall see 
And come to what we long for, ere we die." 
And as he spoke, a fresher breeze fell down 
Upon the gold-stained canvas of the sails. 
So that we, driving fast toward the West 
And its miraculous splendours, saw gold towers 
And spires of burning emerald glance and grow 
Against the golden background. Then great awe 
And wondrous comfort fell upon us all 
And from our lips, " The City of the Lord ! " 
Came with a reverent triumph, for it seemed 
Indeed the town of pearl and golden gates 
And angels walking in the beryl streets ; 
And as we ever ran toward the place 



i6 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

The joy of Mary did possess our hearts, 
And, kneeling down together on the deck. 
We all linked hands and offered thanks to God. 

The hours went by and lengthened out to days, 
And yet no darkness curtained that fair fire. 
No sign of dawning glimmered in the East ; 
But still that glory flamed across the West 
And still into the setting fled our bark. 
So, as we counted it by lapse of time. 
Bereft of natural signs of dark and light. 
Seven days had passed, and on the seventh day. 
At fall of eventide, or what is wont 
To be that time in this our world that knows 
No miracles, the, splendours gathered up 
And running all together like a scroll. 
Were bound into a single blazing globe. 
That gradually did shrink upon itself. 
Until it was but as a greater star 
And hung in heaven, a splendid lucent pearl. 
Flooding the purple twilight with soft fire. 
And as the flaming curtain passed away 
And left the Westward empty, from the span 
Of ocean full before us rose a slope 
Of pleasant shores and smiling terraces. 
Crowned with a tender glory of fair green. 

Our hearts leapt up within us ; something spoke 
To us of the fulfilment of our hopes ; 
And as we drew yet nearer, snow-white sands. 
Gemmed with bright shells and coloured wonderments 
Of stones and seaweed, sparkled on the rim 
Of the glad blue, and what seemed palaces 
Of dreamlike beauty shimmered afar off. 
Like agates, through the mazes of the woods. 
We ran the carvel through a wooded reach 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 17 

Of shelving water, clear and musical 
With fret of breaking ripples on the stones, 
And drove the keel into the yielding sand. 
Where, with a gracious curve, the silver shore 
Sloped down and held the ocean in its arms. 
Landing, we entered, through a portico 
Of columned palms, a forest fair and wide. 
Wherein long glades ran stretching in the calm 
And rayed out through the leafage on all hands ; 
And as our feet trod grass, the tropic night 
Was wasted and the cool sweet early day 
Was born in the blue heavens. On all sides. 
The fruitful earth was mad with joy of Spring, 
Not, as in our cold West, the painful lands 
Flower with a thin spare stint of meagre blooms. 
But with a blaze of heaven's own splendrousness 
Moulded to blossom ; in the lavish land 
There was not room enough for the blithe blooms 
To spread to fulness their luxuriance ; 
And, so they ran and revelled up the trunks 
And, seizing all the interspace of air, 
Shut out the sky with frolic flowerage. 
And as we went, the cloisters of the woods 
Rang with the golden choirings of the birds, 
God's poets, that did give Him praise for Spring, 
And all the tender twilight of the woods 
Was brimmed with ripples of their minstrelsy. 

Some hours we journeyed slowly through the aisles 
Of emerald, hung with flower-trails wild and sweet. 
Whose scent usurped the waftings of the breeze 
And lapt our senses in a golden dream, — 
Slowly, I say ; for wonder held our feet. 
And we were often fain to halt and feed 
Our dazed eyes on the exquisite fair peace 

B 



i8 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Of all things' perfect beauty and delight. 

At last we came to where the cloistered glades 

Grew wider and we heard a noise of bells 

And glad wide horn-notes floating through the trees 

And waning lingeringly along the aisles ; 

And a far voice of some most lovely sound 

Held all the air with one enchanted note. 

As 'twere the cadence of the angels' song, 

When in the dawn the gates of heaven unfold, 

Had floated down and lit upon the earth. 

And then the forest ceased and in the noon, 

Now that the sun rode high in the blue steeps, 

We saw a fair white city in the plain. 

Rounded with blossomed flowers and singing rills 

And fringed with tender grace of nestling trees. 

The gates stood open for our welcoming 

And in we passed, but saw none in the ways 

And wandered slowly onward through the streets, 

Misdoubting us the whole might be a dream 

And loath to speak, lest something break the charm. 

Full lovely and most pleasant was the place, 
Builded with palaces of purest white 
And columns graven in all gracious shapes 
Of lovely things, that harbour in the world 
Or in the poet's fancy. All the walls 
Were laced with golden tracery and set 
With precious marbles, cunningly y-wrought 
To delicate frail fretwork. Argent spires 
Rose, pistil-like, toward the heavens serene. 
From out moon-petalled flower-domes and the roofs 
Seemed, in the noontide, one great graven prayer. 
For the aspiring of their minarets. 
Fair courtyards caught the quiet from the air 
And hoarded up the shadow in their hearts. 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 19 

Making the stillness musical with pearls 
And silver of their fountains' gurgling plash. 
A city of the pleasaunce of the gods 
It seemed, embowered in a flower-soft calm, 
Soiled by no breath of clamour or desire. 
So did we wander up that silver street. 
As one who, in the lapses of a dream, 
Goes like a god, for lack of wonderment. 
And came to where a sudden water welled 
Among moss-feathered pebbles and was turned 
Into the middle way, wherein it ran 
Along the agate stones, rejoicingly. 
And marged itself with bands of vivid bloom. 
It was so clear and sang so sweet a song 
Of cool fresh quiet that we all were fain 
To halt and lave our hands and feet in it. 
So haply virtue might be had from it 
Of its untroubled blitheness. This being done, 
We wandered on again by that fair flood. 
That seemed to us a rippled silver clue, 
Unwinded by some river-deity, 
Friendly to man, and leading, step by step. 
To some far seat of exquisite idlesse. 
So came we where the long slow quiet way 
Was done and lost itself in one wide space. 
Where columns stood in fair and measured ranks. 
Arched with a running frieze of graven work. 
Stately and tall they were, cornelian-plinthed. 
With stems of jasper and chalcedony, 
And ran in goodly order round the place. 
Circling a wide bright curtilage of clear 
And polished marble, veined with branching gold 
And jacinth woven in its cloudless grain. 
In the mid-square a cistern, lipped with pearl 



20 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

And hollowed from the marble of the floor, 
Was clear with crystal water, through whose lymph 
One saw the bottom paved with cunning shapes 
Of ancient legends, beasts and birds and flowers. 
Fashioned in yellow gold on milk-white stone. 

Into the cistern emptied all its rills 
The laughing stream that ran beside our feet, 
And filling all the cool still flood with gleams 
And rippled swirls and eddies of its own 
Mercurial silver, passed out o'er a slope 
Of jasper from the cistern's farther side 
And gurgled through a channel in the floor, 
Wherefrom it drew that sweet and murmurous noise 
Of soft accords suspended, that had swelled 
Upon us in the opening of the wood. 
Until its silver blended with the green 
Of a cool woodland shadow and its chirp 
Of laughing ripples in the cloistered calm 
Of arching trunks was silent. Following 
The blithe stream's way, we stood upon the brink 
Of that cool crystal and gazed down through it 
Upon the inlaid figures in the bed. 
That flashed and wavered so with that unrest 
Of ceaseless currents, that they seemed to us 
To have again a strange half-life in them 
And nod and sign to us. We dipped our hands 
For idlesse in the lappings of the stream. 
That curled and glistered on the marble's brim. 
And wondered idly what these things might be 
That were so fairly pictured on the stone. 
And if the place were void of living soul 
To use its dainty brightness. So we might 
Have stood and gazed and dreamed away the day. 
So fair a spell of quiet held the air ; 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 21 

But, as we listened, suddenly a sound 

Of various music smote upon our ears. 

And we were ware of some enchanted throb 

Of very lovely singing, that for aye 

Drew nearer, as it were the singers came 

Toward us, in the near vicinity. 

And as it grew, the air was all a-flower 

With intermingling antiphons of sound ; 

The passionate pulse of harp-strings, smitten soft 

To wait upon the cadenced swell and wane 

Of the alternate voices, throbbed and stirred 

In the cool peace of that sweet reverend place : 

High steeples rained bell-silver on the roofs 

And the clear gold of clarions floated up 

And echoed through the columned solitudes. 

Before us rose a high and stately wall, 
Painted with cunning past the skill of men, — 
It seemed to us, — with shapes of olden time. 
Presenting, in deep colours, like the flush 
Of flowers that diapers the fields in June, 
All things that have been celebrate of old. 
Shapes of high kings, of heathen men and dames, 
Ladies and knights in dalliance of love 
Or ranged in rank of feast or tournament. 
(I do remember once I saw the like. 
But in a meaner fashion and less fair. 
At Naples, when our army held the realm 
Against the French.) Surpassing fair they were, 
Gods in the aspect and most worshipful, 
Clad in bright raiment, gold and purpurine. 
So goodly was their seeming and withal 
So wonder-lively fashioned, that we looked 
To see them leave their places on the wall 
And walk among us and have speech of us. 



22 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Between two columns in the midst, a space 
Was set apart, whereon no living thing 
Was limned, but the stone was subtly wrought 
With graven silver, arabesqued and chased 
In interwoven patterns, very bright 
And strange, wherein we wondered much to see 
That ever sphere did twine with sphere, nor was 
There any angled figure in the woof. 
Except one great gold cross, that broke the play 
Of circles in the centre of the space. 
In this a wide door opened, that had been 
So closely fitted to the joining wall 
That our eyes had no cognizance of it, 
And folding back itself on either side. 
Gave passage to our sight into an aisle 
Of cloistered fretwork, at whose farthest end 
Shone glint of mystic gold and blazonry. 

It was not clear for distance, at the first. 
What was it moved and glittered in the haze ; 
But, as we gazed, a train of stately men. 
Vestured in flowing garments, swept along 
The heart of that cool stillness and did come 
Majestically toward us with slow steps. 
And as they grew into our clearer sight, 
We saw they were full goodly to behold. 
Gracious in carriage and with port assured 
In simple nobleness. It seemed to us 
That we had known such figures in some dream 
Of bygone days, so strangely bright they were 
Of aspect and serene in kindly peace, 
Resembling nothing earthly we had seen. 
Their vesture was no less unknown to us, 
Being of some fair white fabric, soft as silk 
And looped with broad rich gold and broidery 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 23 

Of banded silver, and their flowing hair 

Was knitted with the plumes of strange bright birds, 

That flashed and sparkled gem-like in the sun, 

Emerald and gold and turquoise. At their head 

Came one whose visage wore a special air 

Of reverence and simplicity, uncrossed 

By any furrow of ignoble care. 

Adown his breast a fair white beard did flow 

And foam-white was the flowerage of his head ; 

But else of sad wan eld was little trace 

Upon his mien, except for venerance. 

It seemed as if his youth had held so dear 

The sojourn of life's spring-time, it had chosen 

Rather to consort with the drifts of age 

Than spread sad wings toward a fresher haven. 

Upon his front a band of woven gold. 

Graven with symbols, added evidence 

Unneeded to his brow's regality, 

And in his hand a silver wand he bore. 

Whereon a golden falcon spread its wings 

And poised itself as if for imminent flight. 

We all bowed heads, as conscious of some might 
Of soul and station far above our own ; 
And that mild ancient, casting on us all 
His eyes' benignness, gave us welcoming, 
In speech so clear and universal-toned. 
We could not choose but apprehend his words 
And the fair meaning of them, when he said, 
" Be welcome to the City of the Day, 
O seekers for the Isle of Bimini ! " 
And knew that here at last our quest was won. 

Then did he speak to those that followed him, 
And the fair youths, that were his chamberlains, 
Laid gentle hands on us and led us all 



24 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Into the inner palace, where we soothed 
Our weary h"mbs with soft and fragrant baths 
And girt us in new garments of fair white, 
Made rich with bands of silken broidery. 
This done, our weariness and our fatigues 
Fell from us with our travel-stained weeds 
And we were as new men in heart and limb. 

Then joyously we followed those our guides, 
Through many an aisle of fair and lucent stone, 
Into a wide and lofted banquet-hall. 
Where the pierced walls showed through the azure sky 
And shaped the light that won across the chinks 
Into a dainty fretted lace of gold. 
High up into the shadow curved the roof 
And treasured up, in many a tender gloom 
Of amethyst and purple, cchoings 
Of woodland songs and cool of forest shades 
And soft sweet breezes straying in the flowers. 
For bearing of its bell of latticed blue 
Were columns of majestic linden-trees. 
Whose blossom scented all the luminous air ; 
And in the boughs gold-feathered birds did make 
Rare music for the pleasance of the folk 
That lay below in many a goodly rank. 
Reclined among sweet scents and lavish flowers. 
There could no shaft of sun be wearisome 
Nor airless ardour of the heavy noon, 
For green of shading boughs and silver plash 
Of ceaseless fountains in the hollow coigns. 

Here was a goodly banquet furnished forth ; 
And as we entered, he that ruled the feast 
Did set us near himself and talked with us 
And showed and told us many goodly things 
And marvels that had usance in the place. 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 25 

Then did we ask him of that fabled stream 
That had such puissance for defeat of age ; 
Whereat his visage grew, meseemed, a thought 
O'ershadowed ; but anon he smiled on us 
And made fair answer that, ourselves refreshed 
With needful rest and slumber, he himself 
Would on the morrow further our desire 
Toward the fount miraculous ; and turned 
The talk to other things and bade us leave 
Our past fatigues and eat and drink new life. 

Great joyance had we in the pleasant things 
That were presented to our every sense. 
And great refreshing for our weary souls. 
Jaded with age and unrelenting toil. 
Nor, in the progress of the glad repast, 
Did cheer sink down to grossness ; for we ate 
Of fruits and meats (and drank of wines the while, 
Costly and rich) that were so delicate 
And noble in their essence, and did hear 
And see and scent such high and lovely things, 
That all that was most godlike in ourselves 
Did cast off imperfection for the nonce 
And was made pure by that most sweet converse. 

The banquet ended, minstrels took their harps 
And sang the praises of the blossom-time 
And high delights of bright and puissant love : 
How May is sweet with amorous effects 
And all things in its season know but one 
And flower and sing and are most fair for one 
And one alone most tender, holiest Love : 
How life in love has ever deathless spring, 
And all the early glory of the year 
Is but the travail of the earth with love. 
That is told forth in bloom of painted flowers 



26 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

And silver speech of many-choiring birds. 

And these strains ended with applause of all 
And to the great enhancement of our peace, 
Another smote the soft complaining strings 
To notes of graver sw^eetness, and did sing 
A quaint sad song of Autumn and of Death, 
Made very sw^eet w^ith joining cadences 
Of silver harp-notes. Thus, methinks, it ran : — 

LET others praise the May for bright and clear 
And Love J that in the flower-time thrives amain : 

For me^ my songs shall hymn the dying year 
And deathy that is the salve of mortal pain. 
For what is autumn but the grateful wane 

Of weary summer to the sleep of snows ? 

And what is winter hut the earth's repose^ 
And death the cold sweet close of some new springy 
That folds to slumber every tired thing? 

Let others walk to hear the roundelay 
Of song-birds quiring to the risen year : 

For mey I love the quiet throstle's lay^ 
When in the woods the shredded leaves are sere 
And the faint heavens are watchet in the mere. 

The autumn! s pale calm grey of sober peace 

Is lovelier to me than the swift increase 
Of colour in the spring-tide' s restless air ; 
For my heart flowers when the boughs are hare. 

If love he May^ then love is nought to me ; 
For in my thought his sweets are sweeter far 

When in the deepening twilight shadows flee. 
When all delights but half unfolded are 
And waste fulfilment comes not to unbar 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 27 

The gates of weariness. Faint flowers are sweet 
And murmured music daintily doth greet 

My senses more than holder scent or song: 

I will my joys not fierce to be^ but long. 

Sweet death, if men do fear thy tender touch. 
It is because they know thee not for fair. 

Since that their eyes are dazzled over-much 
By fierce delights of life and blinding glare 
Of unenduring bliss, that throws despair 

Behind it as its shadow, when the sun 

Slopes through the evening and the hills are dun. 
They would not call thee dark and wan and cold, 
Had their faint eyes but shunned the noon's full gold. 

For lo ! thou art not black to loving eyes, 
But tender grey, not unillumed by rose 

Or that pale feathery gold that on the skies 
Of autumn such a sad sweet glory throws. 
Though in thy shades no glare of sunlight glows, 

Tet through thy dusk a tender moon of hope 

Is clear, nor lacks there in the misted slope 
Of thy long vistas many a helpful light, 

Death, for very piteous is thy might ! 

Let those that love them sing of Love and May ; 

1 give to Love full sweet another name 

And with soft sighs and singings to Him pray. 
And not with trumpets'* silver-strong acclaim 
Blazon to men his wonder-working fame : 
For my Love's name is Death, and I am fain 
To love the long sad years and life's kind wane ; 
For what is autumn but a later spring 
And what is Death but lifers revesturing ? 



28 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Thus blithely sped the golden-footed hours 
Athwart the sloping sunlight of the space 
'Twixt noon and dusk, in various delight 
Of song and converse, till the purple w^ebs 
Of night began to flutter o'er the gold 
Of sunset, and the air of that bright place 
Was strewn with pearls of moonlight. Then men brought 
Great golden-fleeced webs of silk-soft wool 
And furs of white and sable-coated beasts 
And laid them on the floor and thereon strewed 
Fair green of moss and rainbow plumages 
Of exquisite strange birds, whereon the folk, 
Won with light labour to fatigue as light 
And easeful, soon addressed themselves to rest. 

But those fair youths, to whom we were in charge, 
Unbidden, brought us to a place apart, 
Wherein fair chambers, golden-ceiled and hung 
With grey and purple arras, lay beside 
An aisle of columned marble, stretching down. 
With casements clear and quaintly-carven roofs, 
Through many a tender vista of soft shade 
And trellised leafage : there did we bestow 
Our weary limbs and heard the nightingale. 
All night among the windless myrtle-groves 
Without, entreating all the tremulous air 
To passion with the splendour of her song, 
Woven with flower-scents inextricably. 
The night was fair for us with happy dreams, 
And in the morning, ere the sun had drawn 
The early mists from off the blushing day, 
There came to us the king of that fair land 
And did entreat us rise and harness us ; 
For that the place we sought was from the town 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 29 

Distant a long day's journey, and the time 
Was gracious, in the freshness of the dawn, 
To break the earlier hardness of the way. 
Then did we all take horse, and riding forth 
By the fair guiding silver of the brook, 
That ran toward the northward of the town. 
We passed through many a leafy forest glade 
And saw the fresh flowers wet with the night dew 
And listened to the newly-wakened birds. 
That sang their clearest for the fair young day. 
Right goodly was the aspect of the earth, 
Clad with glad blooms and flushed with joy of 

spring. 
As on we wended in the early morn. 
Before the grossness of the noon fell down : 
And as we went, a goodly company, 
The minstrels lifted up their voice and sang. 
As birds that could not choose but music make, 
For very joyance of the pleasant time. 
And one right well I marked, who made the birds 
From every sunny knoll and budded copse 
Give back blithe antiphons of melody 
To every phrase and cadence of his song. 
Comely and young he was, and passing skilled 
In making lays and rondels for the lute : — 
And this, among a crowd of sweeter songs, 
If memory serve me rightly, did he sing. 

BELLS of gold where the sun has been. 

Azure cups in the woven green^ 

Who in the night has been with you 

And painted you golden and jewel-blue 

And brimmed your flower-cups with diamond dew ? 



30 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Lo ! in the evening Spring was dead 
And the flowers had lost their maidenhead 
Under the burning kiss of the sun : 
Tell mej who was the shining one 
That came by night when the sky was dun 

And the pale thin mists were over the moon^ 
And brimmed your hearts with the wine of noon ? 
Who was it breathed on the painted May^ 
Under the screen of the shadow play^ 
And gave it life for another day ? 

I watched at the setting to see him ride. 

But only saw the day that diedy 

The faint-eyed flowerets shrink and fail 

Into their shrouding petals' veil 

And all things under the moon turn pale. 

I watched in the nighty but saw no thing. 

I heard in the midnight the grey bird sing 
And ran to look for the shape of power ^ 
But saw no thing in the silence flower. 
Save moon-mists over forest and bower. 

GoldcupSy it could not have been the May, 
For dead in the twilight the springtime lay. 
Under the arch of the setting sun. 
Ere in the gloaming the day was done 
And the masque of the shadows had begun. 

But lo ! in the early scented morn 

A new delight in the air was born ; 
Brighter than ever bloomed the spring. 
The glad flowers blew and the birds did sing 
And blithe was every living thing. 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 31 

Merles, that flute in the linden-hall^ 
Larks, if ye would, ye could tell me all ; 

Te that were waking at break of day. 

Did ye see no one pass away. 

With ripple of song and pinion-play ? 

Ah ! I am sure that ye know him well. 

Although ye are false and will not tell ! 
Haply, natheless, I shall he near 
And hear you praise him loudly and clear, 
Some day when ye wit not I can hear. 

So wended we with mirth and minstrelsy 
Throughout the morning hours, and presently 
Emerging from the pleasant wood, we rode 
By many a long stretch of level plains. 
Waved fields of rainbow grasses and wide moors 
Bejewelled thick with white and azure bells. 
And saw rich flower-cups, all ablaze with gold 
And purple, lie and swelter in the sun, 
And others, blue as is the sky at noon 
Unclouded, trail and crawl along the grass 
And star the green with sudden sapphire blooms. 
And then we came to where the frolic brook 
Swelled into manhood and it's silver thread 
Was woven out into a river's stretch 
Of broad unruffled crystal. Here a boat. 
Wide bowed and long, lay rocking on the stream, 
Among great lazy lilies, white and red 
And regal purple, lolling in the sun. 

Dismounting here, we floated up the tide. 
Propelled by one that stood upon the prow 
And spurned the sanded bottom with his pole, 
Along wide sunny lapses of the stream. 



32 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Now breasting rushes, purple as the tips 

Of fair Aurora's fingers, when she parts 

The veils of daybreak, now embowered in green 

And blue of floating iris. Though long rifts 

Of wooded cliffs we passed, where here and there 

The naked rock showed white as a swan's breast. 

Riven through and through by veins of virgin gold, 

Or haply cleft with gaping crevices. 

Wherethrough the jewelled riches of its heart 

Did force themselves from out their treasury 

And staunched the cloven wound with precious 

salve 
Of living diamond. Here the water showed, 
Through its clear lymph, great crystals in the bed 
And nuggets of bright metal, water-worn 
To strange fantastic shapes ; and now and then, 
As we did paddle idly with our hands. 
Letting the clear stream ripple through the chinks 
Of our obstructing fingers, with a sound 
Of soft melodious plaining for the check, 
A great gold-armoured fish, with scales of pearl 
And martlets of wine-red upon his back, 
Rose slowly to the surface, waving all 
The pennons of his fins, and gazed at us 
With fearless eyes. And there the wrinkled bed 
Shelved suddenly into a deep clear pool. 
Whose brink was fringed with waving water-bells ; 
And at the bottom lay gold-coloured shells 
And silver pearls embedded in brown sand, 
And many a fish and harmless water-snake 
Floated and crawled along the river-weeds. 

But nothing harmful seemed to us to dwell 
Within that fair clear water ; — pike nor coil 
Of deadly worm, nor on the verging banks 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 33 

In field or copse, as far as eye could see, 

Was any lynx or wolf or brindled beast, 

To stir the lovely stillness of the land 

With whisper of disquiet. As we went. 

Much wondering at the goodly peace that reigned 

In all and at the marvellous fair things 

That glided by us, Perez took a lute 

(Full featly could he turn a stately song), 

And praised the place and its serene delights. 

" O HAPPT pleasaunce of the gods ! " he sang, 
** TVhere all is fair and there is harm in nought ^ 
Where never lightnings break nor thunder-clang,^ 
Nor ever summer air with storm is fraught^ 
Nor by the hurtling hail is ruin wrought^ 
But kindly nature is at peace with man 
And all things sweetly fill their given span ! 

" O pleasant landy where winter never blinds 
The bare waste ways with snow-drift^ nor the frost 
With wrinkled ice the sad wan waters binds^ 
Nor spring-tide joy by winter thoughts is crosty 
Where never hope for weariness is lost, 
But life is warm, though woods be cold and grey. 
And never in the flower-hearts dies the May ! 

" Where never skies are dully nor tempest scowlsy 
Nor monster riots in the river's glasSy 
Where never in the woods the fierce beast prowlsy 
But in the fields the harmless snake does pasSy 
A living jew ely through the flowered grasSy 
Where sun burns noty nor breaths of winter freexey 
Nor thunder-blasts shrill dr early through the trees ! 

C 



34 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

" Tet is there nothing here that in the air 
Should breathe such potency of healing halm 
As might compel the unkindly blast to spare 
Or birds to sing a never-ending psalm^ 
Or meadows glitter with the summer calm^ 
Or purge the terror from the winter grim : 
But men love God and put their trust in Him ! 

" Jnd so all things of His do they hold dear 
And see in all His handiwork a friend^ 
And not a foe^ — and therefore skies are clear 
And flowers are sweety because mens souls intend 
The essence of well-beings and so bend 
The kindred life of wood and field and fell 
To that fair peace that in themselves does dwell ! 

" For man it is that makes his circumstance, 
Honouring all and loving all things goody 
Bethinking him how he may best advance 
The harvesting of nature^ s kindly moody 
By helping her in that relief she would 
Be ever working for his cheer and stay : 
So doth he love and joy in her alway. 

*' happy folk that dwell in such a land ! 
O happy land that hast such habitants, 
That know to walk with nature hand in hand 
And find new cheer in every change and chancey 
Not thinking, when the long grey days advance 
And summer s gold is dyingy hope is less ; 
But proving lightly all things' goodliness."" 

So swung we slowly up that lazy flood, 
Rejoicing in the gladness of the time, 
Until its course did leave the open plains 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 35 

And turned into a forest, intertwined 

So closely o'er our heads with knitted boughs 

And charm of woven leaves, that we could see 

No glimpse of sun nor glitter of the clear 

Sweet firmament, nor any moving thing, 

But only heard dim splashes in the flood 

Of water-rat or duck and distant chirp 

Of birds that far above our heads climbed up 

To hymn the mounting chariot of the sun. 

In that dim emerald shadow, some strange peace 
And spell of haunting quiet seemed to brood 
And soften all the voices of the wood 
And rustle of the leafage to repose. 
Above us rose the high steep flowered banks. 
Heavy with fragrances from unseen bells 
Exhaled of sweet and drowsy-scented flowers. 
And all around the columns of the trees 
Stretched dimly in the twilight, like the aisles 
Of some immense cathedral, where the voice 
Of praise and joy is hushed to reverent prayer. 
And there no bird or beast did seem to dwell 
Nor breeze to creep and sigh among the trees ; 
But in its own mysterious sanctity 
The forest lay and waited for the voice 
Of some high champion that should break the charm 
And win the secret of those mystic deeps. 

The air grew darker, and a fresher breeze 
Sprang up and told us of the waning day ; 
And then the oarsman laid aside his blade 
And loosed the wide sail from the tapering mast. 
Wherein the glad air gathered did so swell 
And struggle, that the boat leapt swiftly on 
Between the shelving woodways. And anon 
The gold of sunset flamed in through the mask 



36 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Of thinning trees, and then the prow was free 
From that dark pass of overhanging wood, 
And the day's light was large on us again. 

The river lapsed, through fringing marish plants 
And ranks of rustling reeds, into the glass 
Of a clear lakelet, where the white discs lay, 
Gold-hearted, in the quiet, and our stem 
Cut through the fronded lake-weeds grudgingly, 
And won slow way toward the other shore. 
Where, with a hollow roar, the river leapt 
And fell into a dark and shaded cave. 

There landed we and moored the barge with ropes, 
And, following our guides, made shift to win. 
Athwart a rocky passage, to a screen 
Of netted boughs and bushes that shut out 
For us the blue horizon's golden marge. 
Some time we struggled through the arduous growth 
Of underwood and brambles, intertwined 
With scarlet-blossomed creepers, till at length 
The last boughs closed behind us and we stood 
Upon the lower slope of a tall hill 
And gazed into the sunset with rapt eyes. 

A wide deep champaign stretched before our view, 
Encircled with a sapphire chain of hills. 
On whose high crests the crown of sunset lay, 
Hallowing the landscape with a blaze of gold. 

Fair and most awful was the majesty 
Of that day's death upon the guardian hills. 
Wrapt in the visible glory of the Lord ; 
And with one impulse, as the budded flames 
Of imminent heaven lay on us, we all 
Fell down upon our knees and worshipped, 
As knowing the great God was surely there. 

So knelt we all in silence, till the sun 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 37 

Had faded from the westward, and the grey, 

Washed with pale gold, that fills the interspace 

'Twixt ended day and night, held all the air 

With its mild tender afterglow. Then he 

Whose brow was kingly with the banded gold 

Arose and went a little way aside 

Within some trees, that stood apart from us 

About the casting of an arbalest, 

And made as if he sought for something there ; 

And coming, in a little, back to us. 

He took my hand, and signing to the rest 

To follow, led us all into a nook. 

Wherein tall oak-trees circled round a rock 

Of moss-veined marble. Therein entering, 

A fitful radiance, as it were the play 

Of glancing diamonds, glittered in our eyes, 

And looking round, we saw where from the stone 

A fair clear water trickled, drop by drop. 

Between lush webs of golden-threaded moss, 

And fell in jewelled sprays of liquid light 

Upon the crystal pebbles. Very pure 

And clear it was, and so unearthly bright 

In the dim twilight of that shadowy place. 

We doubted not but here our quest was filled 

And this was e'en that fountain where our flesh. 

Being laved, should put off sad and weary age 

And clothe itself anew with goodly youth. 

Then he who led us signed to us to drink, 
For this was that same water we had sought 
And wearied for so long by sea and land. 

Albeit, for a space we could not stir 
For wonderment, commingled with strange awe 
And ravishment of our fulfilled desires. 
That was nigh pain for very mightiness. 



38 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

And then Bias stepped toward that trickling thread 
Of crystal, and did stoop him down to drink ; 
And ere his knees touched earth, I, following. 
Bent down my hand into the rippled pool, 
That lay beneath the downfall of the rill. 
And drawing back an instant for surprise 
At the most deathly coldness of the stream. 
Made shift to gather water for a draught 
Within the hollowed middle of my palm. 

It scattered into diamonds through the chinks 
Of my unnerved fingers and did leave 
So scant a pool of fluid in my hand. 
That I was fain to stoop and fill again. 
With more attent precaution, ere I wet 
My lips with it. I filled my two joined palms, 
And was about to raise them to my mouth, 
Nay, almost steeped my lips, when suddenly, 
Reflected in the streamlet, I was ware 
Of some strange light that was made visible 
From out the dusk above, and, looking up, 
I spied a mooned wonder in the air. 
Full of strange lights and mystic harmonies 
Of blending colour ; and as I did gaze, 
I saw a great white cross, that grew and burnt 
In its fair middle. Wonder and great awe 
Unclasped my hands and brought them to my face. 
To hide from my weak sight that awful light. 
Whereby the unwilling water once again 
Did have its liberty and showered down. 
Like broken jewels, back into the pool. 
And as I knelt, with awed and hidden eyes, 
I heard a voice that spake from out the bell 
Of that miraculous flower, most reverend 
And awful, as it were the living God ; 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 39 

And these words smote my hearing : " Foolish merty 

That thought God like another of yourselves^ 

That make a work and set it up for good 

And after look again and know it ill 

And straightway raze and build it up aneWy 

Repenting of the framework of your handsy — 

Know that the Lord of all cannot repent 

Nor turn again His ordered harmonies 

Of life and death and nature^ saying noty 

* 1 have not wrought it seemly — / repent ! ' 

Nor can His hands undo what He has done. 

" O fools and hard of heart I in all these years 
Have ye then never read eartKs parable 
Of day and night alternatCy seed and fruity 
That tells you dusk must be ere light can come ? 
Loy in the fields the summer's lavish bloom 
Is spent and wasted by the autumn s breath 
And dies with winter, to revive with spring ; 
And all things fill their order, birds and beasts 
And all that unto earthly weal pertains. 
Nor will the spheric working change its course 
Nor slacken for the prayers of foolish men. 
That lift fond voice for what their baby eyes 
Deem good and all-sufficient in desire. 
Seeing only, in their circumscribed scope, 
A segment of the circle of God's love. 

" So may not the renewing of lost youth 
Be won but through the natural way of death. 
And man must, — like an ear of corn, that droops 
And withers in the ground before it stir 
And sprout again with gay and goodly bloom, — 
Yield up his wayworn flesh and weary soul 
Unto the soothing rest of friendly death y 
Ere a new fire shall stir the curdled blood 



40 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Of age to a new ardour and the soul 
Be clad afresh with robes of lusty youth. 

" Wherefore know ye that^ of a certainty^ 
None shall have Itfe^ excepting first he die. 
And therefore is this water cold as death ,• 
For through its death is life the quicklier won. 
Wherefore, if ye repent of your desire 
And will to wear in weariness of eld 
The sad remainder of your lagging years.. 
Rather than dare the icy plunge of death. 
Depart and purge your hearts of foolish hope." 

With that it ceased : and we, for wonderment 
And awe, awhile could neither move nor speak ; 
But still that splendour hung upon the air. 
And still we veiled our eyes for reverence. 

Then Perez rose, and, coming to the brink 
Of that miraculous water, knelt and said : 

" Lord, I have haste for youth and fear not death. 
For joy of that great hope that is beyond." 

So lightly he addressed himself to drink 
Of that clear stream ; and we, that watched him do, 
When as the water touched him, saw his face, 
As 'twere an angel's, with heroic love 
And faith transfigured for a moment's space ; 
And then such glory broke from that high cross 
And shone athwart his visage, that we fell 
Aswoon upon the grass for fear and awe. 
And had no further sense of what befell. 

When life again returned into my brain. 
The night was wasted, and the early dawn 
Was golden in the Orient. As my eyes 
Grew once more open to the light of day, 
I found myself outstretched upon the sand 
Of that fair shore, where we had landed first, 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 41 

Hard by our place of entry in the wood. 

Around me were my comrades ; some, like me, 
Awaking from the trance of that strange sleep. 
And others working on the caravel. 
That lay high up upon the waveless strand. 
Striving to push her down to meet the tide 
That crawled up slowly from the outer sea. 

But every sign of our adventurings 
In that fair city, with those goodly men, 
And of that wondrous fountain of the hills. 
Was vanished. In the tangles of the wood. 
The fair white dwellings we had seen with eyes, 
When first the sunset led us to the place. 
Had disappeared, nor in the forest's close 
Green front of woven boughs, that stood opposed 
Toward the ocean, was there visible 
A single opening, wherethrough we might chance 
Again upon the cloistered woodland way. 
That led us to the wonder-lovely town. 
Nor was there any sign or any trace 
Of habitance of men or mortal use 
Therein : but all was as no human foot, 
Save ours, had trodden on the silver sand. 

At this we marvelled greatly and most like 
Would have misdoubted all to be a dream, 
But that there lay beside us on the strand 
Our comrade, Perez, not — as first it seemed 
To us — asleep, but — as we soon knew — dead. 
And still his visage wore the wondrous smile 
Of deathless ravishment it had put on 
With the clear draught of that miraculous fount. 

And so we knew that it had been no dream. 
But that our eyes had seen our hearts' desire, 
And God himself had surely talked with us. 



42 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

Long with persistent hope we searched the shore 
Around the h'ttle harbour on all sides, 
So haply we might once more light upon 
The woodway leading to the inland plain 
And its blithe wonders : but the silent trees 
Were secret and would show no trace of it. 

And so with heavy hearts we left our search 
And made a grave for burial of the dead, 
And laid him there with a sad reverence, 
With wail and music of a funeral song ; 
For very dear the man had been to us, 
Being of a noble nature and approved 
In all renown of worth and steadfastness. 

Then sadly from a little smooth-stemmed tree 
We rove a branch and hewing it in twain. 
Made shift to fashion of the peeled white wood 
The rude resemblance of the blessed Rood 
And planted it for memory on the grave. 
And as we did this thing, the forest air 
Was voiceful with the carol of a bird, 
That piped and piped as though he ne'er should die. 
So joyous was his song and full of hope, 
It seemed as if the angel of the dead 
Had entered in the semblance of a fowl 
And sang to give us lightening of our grief. 

And so it came to pass that with the song 
Our hearts were comforted and some did deem 
They saw himself that stood upon the strand 
And beckoned to us not to tarry there 
Nor strive against the given will of God, 
But turn our prow from off that hallowed shore. 

We waited not for bidding, but launched out 
And made the swift keel whistle through the surge. 



FROM "ASPECT AND PROSPECT" 



No gods have we to trust to, new or olden ; 

The blue of heaven knows their thrones no more : 
The races of the gods in death are holden : 

Their pale ghosts haunt the icy river's shore. 

Availeth not our beating at their door : 
There is no presence in their halls beholden ; 
The silence fills their jewelled thrones and golden ; 

The shadow lies along their palace-floor. 

And lo ! if any set his heart to singing, 

Thinking to witch the world with love and light. 
Strains of old memories set the stern chords ringing ; 

The morning answers with the songs of night. 

For who shall sing of pleasance and delight. 
When all the sadness of the world is clinging 
About his heart-strings and each breeze is bringing 

Its burden of despairing and despite ? 

Help is there none : night covers us down-lying 
To sleep that comes uneath with devious dreams : 

The morning brings us sadness but and sighing : 
We gather sorrow from the noontide beams : 
And if a man set eyes on aught that seems 

An oasis of peace, he finds, on nighing. 

Its promise false, and, sad almost to dying. 

Turns from the mirage and its treacherous streams. 



44 FROM "ASPECT AND PROSPECT" 



II 

And yet one hope by well-nigh all is cherished, — 

Albeit many hold it unconfest, — 
The dream of days that, when this life has perished 

And all its strife and turmoil are at rest. 

Shall rise for men out of some mystic West, — 
A paradise of peace, where death comes never 
And life flows calmly as some dreamy river 

That wanders through the Islands of the Blest ; 

A dream of love-lorn hearts made whole of sorrow. 

Of all life's doubts and puzzles fleeted by. 
Of severed lives reknit in one to-morrow 

Of endless bliss beneath the cloudless sky ; 

A dream of lands where hope shall never die. 
But in the fair clear fields, browbound with moly 
Our dead desires shall wander, healed and holy, 

And over all a mystic peace shall lie ; 

A peace that shall be woven of old sadness 

And bitter memories grown honey-sweet, 
Where our lost hopes shall live again in gladness, 

Chaining the summer to their happy feet ; 

Where never fulness with desire shall meet 
Nor the sweet earth divide from the clear heaven, 
Nor mortal grossness shall avail to leaven 

The ecstasy of that supernal seat. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



FROM "THE PLAGUE" 

Three rooms they had, poor, but yet not without 

Some touch of grace and comfort to conceal 

Their poverty. The place was bright and warm 

With gorgeous shells and corals, red and gold, 

Rose-pink and pearly, that the husband's care 

And father's thought had brought as memories 

Of cruises in the wondrous southern seas ; 

And spangled foreign birds, that once had hopped 

And chirrupped 'mid the palm and banian boughs. 

In the clear air of golden-stranded isles. 

Under the blue of rainbow-flowered skies. 

With their emblazoned plumage, emerald 

And gold and purple, lighted up the place 

With an unreal unfamiliar air 

Of foreign splendour. Very dear to them, 

For whom long use had sanctified its walls 

And love had lent its very poverty 

A beauty of its own, the dwelling was, — 

To them, who never in their lives, perhaps. 

Had seen a field of cowslips all in bloom 

Nor gathered violets in the early spring ; 



Meantime, the money he had left with them, 
To fend them from privation and avert 
The grim necessity of ceaseless toil 

45 



46 FROM "THE PLAGUE" 

For scanty bread, though hoarded with close care, 

Was all expended, and the stern, hard times 

Exacted labour far beyond their wont. 

One after one the little luxuries 

And fanciful adornments, that the lost 

Had gathered with such loving care for them 

Were bartered for bare food, and naked walls 

Joined with wan looks to make the place look drear, 

That erst had worn so homely bright an air. 

Frotn "London City Poems." 



QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 

[At an inquest held at the Whitehorse Tavern, before Mr. Cooper, 
Coroner for the Western district, on the body of Eliza Farrell, unfortunate 
female, found drowned below Waterloo Bridge on Monday last, Rose 
Farrell said, " Deceased was my sister. She was an unfortunate. She was 
unmarried. She had worked as a seamstress till trade was so bad last 
year that she could not earn a living at the prices paid by the sweaters, 
and she then went upon the streets." Witness believed she would never 
have done so but for her two illegitimate children, of whom she was 
passionately fond. Witness had no doubt that deceased's mind had been 
affected by their death. They died of neglect and starvation, owing to a 
woman, whom deceased paid to take care of them, having spent the 
money in drink. She paid the woman every penny she could scrape 
together, and witness had known her sell the dress off her back to make 
up the weekly money. Deceased came to her on Saturday night, after 
having been to see the children, and told her she had found they were 
dead and had been already buried by the parish. She seemed quite dis- 
tracted, and rushed out of the house like a mad thing, and witness had 
never seen her again. The photograph produced (found on deceased) was 
that of the children. After a few remarks from the coroner, the jury 
returned a verdict of ' ' Suicide in a state of temporary insanity." — Extract 
from daily paper. ^ 



Just a drowned woman, with death-draggled hair 

And wan eyes, all a-stare ; 
The weary limbs composed in ghastly rest, 

The hands together prest, 
Tight holding something that the flood has spared, 

Nor even the rough workhouse folk have dared 

To separate from her wholly, but untied 
Gently the knotted hands and laid it by her side. 

A piteous sight, — yet not without some sign 

Of handiwork divine ; 
Some faint, mysterious traces of content 

About the brows, unbent 

47 



48 QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 

At last from toil and misery, — some mark 
Of child-like, tired composure in the stark, 
Wan features, on whose calm there is imprest 
At last the seal of rest. 



See, she was fair, — and now she's rid of strife, 

She's comelier than in life ; 
For death has smoothed the tresses of her hair 

And stroked the lines of care. 
With no ungentle hand, from off her brow. 
She seems at peace at last, — no matter how. 
Death has been angel-sweet to her tired soul ; 

She has no need of dole. 



You know her story ? Just the sad, old tale, 

Whose victims never fail ! 
Common enough and mean, but yet not quite 

Without its gleam of light ; 
Not all devoid of some redeeming spark 
Of nobleness to lighten its grim dark. 
You turn away. You've heard of many such ? 
"She was so wicked ! " But she loved so much. 



I tell you, this poor woman you despise. 

From whom you turn your eyes. 
Loved with an ardour, side by side with which 

Our lives, so seeming rich 
In virtues and in grandeurs, fade away 
Into the dusk, as night before the day. 
Yet of her life you fear to hear me tell. 
" She was so wicked ! " But she loved so well. 



QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 49 

You saw the portrait taken from her grasp, 

Stiffened in Death's cold clasp ? 
Two little children, poorly clad and plain, 

Sun-scorched and worn with pain. 
Wan with mean cares, too early for their years, 
Their child-eyes eager with unchildish fears 
And sordid, bitter yearnings. " But a smutch ! " 
You say. " And after all it's nought to me 
What was her life and what her hopes might be. 
She was so wicked ! " Oh, she loved so much ! 

True, a mere daub, whereon the beneficent sun 

Has written, in faint, dun, 
Unbeauteous lines, a hard and narrow life, 

Wherein dull care was rife 
And little thought of beauty or delight 
Relieved the level blackness of the night : 
And yet I would not change those pictured two 
For all the cherubs Raphael ever drew. 

Two little faces, plain enough to you, 

Nothing of bright or new ; 
Such faces as one meets amongst each crowd, 

Sharp-visaged and low-browed ; 
And yet to her, her picture-books of heaven, 
The treasuries from which the scanty leaven. 
Wherewith she stirred her poor mean life to joy, 
Was drawn, — pure gold from her without alloy. 

They were her all, and by no sacred tie, 

No pure maternity. 
To her the name of wife had been denied. 

In sin she lived and died. 

D 



50 QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 

She was an outlaw from the pale of right, 
And yet there was that in her had such might, 
That she would not have shamed our dear Lord Christ. 
She loved, and that sufficed. 

They were her shame and pride, her hope and fear, 

To her how dreadly dear 
We scarce can feel. You happy, virtuous wives. 

Whose quiet, peaceful lives 
Flow on, unstirred by misery or crime, 
Can have no thought how high these souls can climb 
For love ; with what a weird, unearthly flame 
These wretched mothers love their babes of shame ; 
How they can suffer for them, dull and mean 
As they may seem, and sell their souls to screen 
Their darlings, dealing out their hearts' best blood, 
Drop after drop, to buy them daily food. 

And so for years she toiled for them, as none 

Could ever toil save one 
Who had nought else to care for, night and day, 

Until her hair grew grey 
With labour such as souls in Dante's hell 
Might have been bound to, and with fiends as fell 
To act as her taskmasters and compel 
The poor, thin fingers ; — yet was honest still 
For many a weary day and night, until 
She found, with aching heart and pain-crazed head. 
Her toil could not suffice to earn her children bread. 

They were her all ; and she, ground down by want, 

With hollow eyes and gaunt, 
Saw but their misery, small beside her own, 

Heard but their hungry moan. 



QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 51 

Could not endure their piteous looks, and sold 
Herself to infamy, to warm their cold. 
To feed their hunger and assuage their thirst, 
Not hers. And yet, folk say, she is accurst ! 

Cruel as fate was, there was yet in store 

More pain for her and more 
Fierce anguish. Famine and the plague combined, 

In league with her own kind, 
To steal from her her one source of content, 
The one faint gleam of higher things, that blent 
Its glimmer with her life's unbroken grey ; 
The one pale star, that turned her night to day, 
Sank in the chill of death's delivering wave. 

Extinguished in the grave. 

Not even the omnipotence of Love 

Had power to rise above 
The sullen stern unpitying sweep of Fate, 

That left her desolate. 
O wretched mother ! Wretched time of ours ! 
When all enlightenment's much-vaunted powers 
To save this Magdalen's all could only fail, 

When Love has no avail ! 

Starved even to death ! For this she'd sold her soul ; 

This was her striving's goal ! 
Life had no longer aught that might suffice 
To hallow all its dreary want and vice. 
Nothing but death remained to her, the crown 
Of all whose lives are hopeless. So fell down 
Her star of life into the dusk of night. 

And she gave up the fight. 



52 QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 

So calm and peaceful seemed the dark grey flood, 

Foul with much human blood. 
God help her ! Death was kinder than the world. 

The sullen waters whirled 
A moment o'er a circling plash, and then 
She was forgotten from the world of men 
And it was nought to her what folk might say. 

Quiet at last she lay. 

I know not if this poor soul's martyrdom 

For you be wholly dumb. 
To me, I own, her sin seems holier far 

Than half our virtues are ; 
For hers was of that ore which, purged of dross. 
Yields gold that might have gilded Christ's own cross 
And He have smiled. And yet you fear her touch ? 

" She was so wicked ! " But she loved so much. 

And of her common, mean and awful fate 

Our righteous ones will prate, — 
A fruitful text for homily ! — until 

Another come to fill 
Her vacant place. And yet none sees the bloom 
Of love, that opened in her life's blank gloom 
And made it angel-bright. Folk turn aside 
And know not how a martyr lived and died. 

" Accursed," say they, " is the suicide. 

In sin she lived and died. 
We have in her, and she in us, no part. 

Our lives, thank heaven ! dispart. 
At least we're holier than she." Alas ! 
My brethren, when reflected in God's glass, 



QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 53 

I doubt me much if many of our lives 
Will, when the day of reckoning arrives, 
Or all our virtues, with her sin compare 
Or as her life be fair. 



Even grim Death was pitiful to her ; 

Her rest he did not stir. 
Shall we be, who with her drew common breath. 

Less pitiful than Death ? 
We, who have heard how Christ once lived and died, 
With whom His love is fabled to abide, 
Shall we avoid a poor dead sinner's touch ? 
So wicked, say we ? Oh, she loved so much ! 

For me, I cannot hold her life"'s long pain 

To have been all in vain. 
I cannot think that God will let her go. 

After this life of woe ; 
Cannot believe that He, whose deathless love 
She aped so well, will look on from above 
With careless righteousness, while she sinks down 
Into hell's depths, and with a pious frown, 
Leave her to struggle in the devil's clutch. 
True, she was wicked ; — but she loved so much. 

From " London City Poems." 



THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 

" Le regard calme et haul 
Qui damne tout un peuple autour d'un ^chafaud." 

Baudelaire. 



I GO to an evil death, to lie in a shameful grave, 

And I know^ there is never a hope and never a God that 

can save ; 
Yet I smile, for I know^ that the end of my toil and my 

striving is come ; 
I shall sleep in the bosom of death, where the voice of 

the scorners is dumb. 

I go in the felons' cart, with my hands bound fast with 

the cord. 
And nothing of brave or bright in the death that I ride 

toward : 
The people clamour and jeer, with a fierce and an evil 

glee, 
And the mothers and maids that pass do shudder to look 

on me. 

For the deed that I did for men, the life that I crown 

with death, 
Was a crime in the sight of all, a flame of the pest- wind's 

breath ; 
And the good and the gentle pass with a sad and a 

drooping head. 
As I go to my punished crime, to lie with the felon dead. 



THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 55 

But lo ! I am joyful and proud, as one that is newly 

crowned : 
I heed not the gibes and the sneers and the hates that 

compass me round ; 
I come not, with drooping head, to the death that a 

felon dies ; 
I come as a king to the feast, with a deathless light in 

mine eyes. 

I ride with a dream in mine eyes and the sound of a 

dream in mine ears, 
And my spirit wanders again in the lapse of the bygone 

years ; 
I smile with the bygone hope and I weep for the bygone 

grief. 
And I weave me the olden plans for the world's and the 

folk's relief. 

I build me over again the time of my yearning youth. 

When my heart was sick for men's grief, and my glad- 
ness failed me for ruth ; 

For I saw that their lives were weary and maddened 
with bitter toil, 

And there came no helper to heal, no prophet to purge 
the soil. 

I mind me how all the joys a man, in his manhood's 

prime. 
May have in the new sweet world and the strength of 

his blossom-time. 
Were saddened and turned to gall by the cry of the 

world's lament. 
That withered the roses' bloom and poisoned the violets' 

scent. 



56 THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 

My heart is full of the thoughts that gathered within 

my soul 
And the anguish that held my life at the sight of my 

fellows' dole ; 
I mind me how, day by day, the passion grew in my 

breast. 
The voices cried in my sleep, and hindered my heart 

of rest. 

It rises before me now, in its fragrance ever the 

same, 
The time when my soul found peace and my yearning 

soared like a flame. 
The day when my shapeless thought took spirit and 

speech and form. 
The hour when I swore alone to front the fire and the 

storm. 

It rises before me now, the little lane by the wood. 
With the golden-harvested fields, where the corn in its 

armies stood. 
The berries brown in the hedge, the eddying leaves en 

the breeze. 
And the spirits that seemed to speak in the wind that 

sighed through the trees. 

The path where I went alone, in the midst of the 

swaying sheaves. 
Through the landscape glowing with gold and crimson 

of autumn leaves ; 
The place where my full resolve rose out of my tears 

and sighs. 
Where my life was builded for me and my way lay clear 

in mine eyes. 



THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 57 

I mind me the words I spoke, the deeds that I did to 

save, 
The life that I lived to rescue the world from its living 

grave ; 
I mind me the blows I smote at the throned falsehood 

and blame. 
The comfort I spoke for the lost, the love that I gave 

to shame. 

I mind me of all the hates that gathered about my 

strife, 
The gibes that poisoned my speech, the lies that 

blackened my life, 
The fears that maddened the folk, the folly that shrank 

with dread 
From the love I spoke for the live, the hope I held for 

the dead. 

For the folk, with their purblind souls, chose rather to 

live and die 
In the olden anguishful slough, to weary and groan and 

sigh 
In the old familiar toil and the old unvarying hate, 
Than rise to a joy unknown, a love to free them from 

fate. 

And the words that I spoke for love, the deeds that I 

did for hope. 
The future I showed for life in the new sweet credence''s 

scope. 
They deemed them a tempting of hell, a blasphemy and 

a crime ; 
They thought the angel a fiend, that called them out of 

their slime. 



58 THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 

The yearning that cried in their breasts, that met mine 

own like a flood, 
They thought to quench it with fire, to stay its passion 

with blood. 
To deaden my voice with death, (their own should be 

silent then ;) 
And so I come to atone for the love that I bore to men. 

My enemies laugh in their glee, as the people jeer at 

my fate ; 
They know not the seed of love that lies at the heart of 

hate : 
They give me hatred for love and death for the life I 

brought ; 
But I smile, for I know that love shall come at the last, 

unsought. 

I look far on in the years, and see the blood that I 

shed 
Crying a cry in men's ears, crying the cry of the 

dead ; 
I see my thought and my hope fulfilling my work for 

men 
In the folk that jeer at me now, the lips that spat at me 

then. 

I know that for many a year my life shall be veiled with 

shame. 
That many an age shall hate me and make a mock of 

my name ; 
I know that the fathers shall teach their children many 

a year 
To hold my hope for a dread and know my creed for 

a fear 



THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 59 

But I know that my work shall grow in the darkness 

ever the same ; 
Its seed shall stir in the earth in the shade of my evil 

fame ; 
My thought shall conquer and live, when the sound of 

my doom is fled 
And my name and my crime are buried, to lie with 

the unknown dead. 

Wherefore I smile as I go, and the joy at my heart is 

strong. 
And I gaze with a peace and a hope on the cruel glee 

of the throng ; 
I live in my thought and my love, I conquer Time with 

my faith. 
And I ride with a deathless hope to crown my living 

with death. 

I loved thee, beautiful Death, in the fresh sweet time 

of the spring. 
And I will not fail from my troth in the wind of the 

axe's swing ; 
I come to thy bridal bed, O Death my beloved, I come ! 
I shall sleep in thine arms at the last, when the voice of 

the scoffers is dumb. 

O friends that are faithful yet, if your love shall bear me 

in mind 
With a graven stone on the tomb where I sleep with 

my felon kind. 
Write me as one that fell in the way of a punished 

crime, 
" Hated of men he died, in the heart of the evil 

time ! " 



6o THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 

And yet I would not be thought to glose o'er my full 

stern fate 
Or leave weak words of complaint for the ages that lie 

in wait. 
Rase out the final words ; I will rest with the first 

content ; 
" Hated of men he died " shall stand for my monument. 

I was never in love with the praise nor afraid of the 

censure of fools : 
Mean they as well as they may, they were ever the 

dastard's tools. 
Strike out the words of complaint ; I will stand by the 

rest alone : 
" Hated of men " shall pass for the roll of my virtues on 

stone. 

And yonder on in the years, some few of the wise, 
peradventure, 

Shall read in the things laid bare the truth of my life- 
long venture, 

Shall see my life like a star in the shrouding mist of the 
ages, 

And set my name for a light and a patriot's name in 
their pages. 

And then shall the clearer sight and the tenderer thought 

fulfil 
The things that I left unsaid, the words that are lacking 

still : 
A poet shall set my name in the gold of his noble rhyme ; 
" Hated of men he died, in the heart of the evil time." 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

" Traditur etiam nonnuUos vi pervincente 
amoris ipsum contra sumtnum Domini judicium 
pr3ewa.\uisse."—Eused. de Fid. rebus Epist. 

The ways are white in the moon's light, 

Under the leafless trees ; 
Strange shadows go across the snow, 

Before the tossing breeze. 

The night, meseems, is full of dreams. 

Ghosts of the bygone time : 
Full many a sprite doth walk to-night 

Over the soundless rime. 

The burg stands grim upon the rim 

Of the steep wooded height ; 
In the great hall, the casements tall 

Flame with the fireside light. 

From the hearth's womb, athwart the gloom, 

Rays out the firelight red : 
Sir Loibich there before the flare 

Sits in a dream of dread. 

The tower-light glows across the snows, 

In the black night defined : 
The cresset-fire flares high and higher, 

Tossed by the raging wind. 



62 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

The knight sits bent, with eyes intent 

Upon the dying fire ; 
Sad dreams and strange in sooth do range 

Before the troubled sire. 

He sees the maid the past years laid 

Upon his breast to sleep, 
Long dead in sin, laid low within 

The grave unblest and deep. 

He sees her tears, her sobs he hears. 
Borne on the shrieking wind ; 

He sees her hair, so golden-fair, 
Stream out her form behind. 

He hears her wail, with lips that fail, 

To him to save her soul ; 
He sees her laid, unhouseled, 
Under the crossless knoll. 

His heart is wrung, his soul is stung 

To death with memories : 
His face grows white as the moon's light 

And all his words are sighs. 

" Ah would, dear Christ, my tears sufficed 
To ransom her ! " he cries : 

" Sweet heaven, to win her back from sin, 
I would renounce the skies. 

" Might I but bring her suffering 

To pardon and to peace, 
I for mine own sin would atone, 

Where never pain doth cease : 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 63 

" I for my part would gnaw my heart, 

Chained in the flames of hell ; 
I would abide, unterrified, 

More than a man shall tell." 

The flame burns red ; he bows his head 

Upon his joining hands ; 
The wraiths of old are shown and told 

Upon the dying brands. 

A hoarse scream tears athwart his ears, 

Strange howls are in the air ; 
The wolves do stray in search of prey 

Across the moorlands bare. 

Red eyes flame forth from south to north. 

The beasts are all a-chase ; 
God help the wight that goes to-night 

Among the wild wood-ways ! 

The moon is pale, the night-winds wail. 

Weird whispers fill the night : 
" Dear heart, what word was that I heard 

Ring out in the moonlight ? 

" Methought there came to me my name. 

Cried with a wail of woe ; 
A voice whose tone my heart had known 

In the days long ago." 

'Twas but the blast that hurried past. 

Shrieking among the pines ; 
The souls that wail upon the gale, 

When the dim starlight shines. 



64 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

Great God ! The name ! Once more it came 

Ringing across the dark ! 
" Loibich ! " it cried. The night is wide, 

The dim pines stand and hark. 

The lead-grey heaven by the blast is riven ; 

God ! How the torn trees shriek ! 
The wild wind soughs among the boughs, 

As though the dead did speak. 

" Loibich ! Loibich ! My soul is sick 

With hungering for thee ! 
The night fades fast, the hours fly past ; 

Stay not, come forth to me ! " 

Great Heaven ! The doubt is faded out ; 

It was her voice that spake ; 
He made one stride and open wide 

The casement tall he strake. 

The cloudwrack grey did break away ; 

Out shone the ghostly moon ; 
Off slid the haze from all the ways. 

Before her silver shoon. 

Pale silver-rayed, out shone the glade. 

Before the castle wall. 
And on the lea the knight could see 

A maid both fair and tall. 

Gold was her hair, her face was fair, 

As fair as fair can be. 
But through the night the blue corpse-light 

About her could he see. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 65 

She raised her face toward the place 

Where Loibich stood adread ; 
There was a sheen in her two een, 

As one that long is dead. 

She looked at him in the light dim 

And beckoned with her hand: 
"Sir Knight," she said, " thy prayer hath sped 

Unto the heavenly land. 

" Come forth with me : the night is free 

For us to work the thing 
That is to do, before we two 

Shall hear the dawn-bird sing." 

He took his brand within his hand. 

His dirk upon his thigh : 
And he hath come, through dusk and gloom. 

Where wide the portals lie. 

" Saddle thy steed. Sir Knight, with speed. 

Thy faithfullest," quoth she, 
" For many a tide we twain must ride 

Before the end shall be." 

The steed is girt, black Dagobert, 

Swift-footed as the wind ; 
The knight leapt up upon his croup, 

The maid sprang up behind. 

A stately pair the steed doth bear 

Upon his back to-night : 
The sweatdrops rain from flank and mane. 

His eyes start out for fright. 

E 



66 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

Her weight did lack upon his back ; 

He trembled as he stood ; 
It seemed as 'twere a death-cold air 

Did freeze the courser's blood. 

She threw the charms of her white arms 

About Sir Loibich's neck : 
It seemed as if 't had been a drift 

Of snow on him did break. 

The spurs are dyed deep in the side 

Of the destrere amain ; 
The leaves do chase behind his race 

And far out streams his mane. 

The wind screams past ; they ride so fast,— 

Like troops of souls in pain 
The snowdrifts spin, but none may win 

To rest upon the twain. 

So fast they ride, the blasts divide 

To let them hurry on ; 
The wandering ghosts troop past in hosts 

Across the moonlight wan. 

Then fly across the frozen floss. 
Across the frost-starred mead : 

Hill, wood and plain they cross amain ; 
Hill, plain and wood succeed. 

The wild wind drops, the snow-whirl stops, 
Frost fades from grass and brere ; 

The dim clouds die from out the sky 
And forth the moon shines clear. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 67 

A sudden hush, and then a rush 

Of magic melodies ; 
A summer wood, with moon-pearls strewed 

And jasmine-girdled trees. 

The lady laid her hand of shade 

Upon the hurrying horse, 
And suddenly, upon the lea, 

He halted in his course. 

To them there came a fragrant flame, 

A light of elfinry : 
The haggard night poured forth delight 

And flowers of Faiirie. 

A wondrous song did wind along 

The moon-besilvered glades, — 
And all the things the elf-night brings 

Did glitter from the shades. 

" Light down. Sir Knight, in the moonlight ; 

Light down and loose my hand ; 
I must be gone ; but thou hast won 

Unto the Faery land." 

" By Christ His troth I " he swore an oath, 

" No Faery land for me, 
Except thou light thee down to-night. 

Therein with me to be." 

" Alas, Sir Knight, I must this night 

Harbour me far away ; 
Far be't from thee to rest with me 

Where I must dwell for aye." 



68 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

He smote his breast : " By Christ His rest, 

No Faery land will I ! 
Rather in hell with thee to dwell 

Than lonely in the sky ! " 

The thunder broke, the lightning-stroke 
Fell down and tore the earth ; 

The firm ground shook, as though there took 
The world the throes of birth. 

The elf-song died, the moon did hide 

Her face behind the haze, 
And once again they ride amain 

Across the wild wide ways. 

The night grew black ; the grey cloudwrack 

Whirled fast across the skies ; 
What lights are those the white snow throws 

Reflected in their eyes ? 

What flames are those the blackness shows, 

Rising like rosy flowers 
Up to the lift ? What ruddy rift 

Shines out in the night hours ? 

The night is wide : they ride and ride. 
The lights grow bright and near ; 

There comes a wail upon the gale 
And eke a descant clear. 

There comes a plain of souls in pain 

And eke a high sweet song. 
As of some fate whose grief is great. 

But yet whose hope is strong. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 69 

Aye louder grow the sounds of woe, 

But the song sweeter still, 
Until the steed doth slacken speed 

At foot of a high hill. 

The hazes grey before their way 

Divided are in two ; 
A wondrous sight midmost the night 

Lies open to their view. 

The hill is strewn beneath the moon 

With strange and singing fires ; 
In every flame a soul from shame 

And soil of sin aspires. 

From every fire, higher and higher, 

The song of hope doth rise : 
These are the sprites that God delights 

To fit for Paradise. 

" Light down. Sir Knight ; I pray, alight ; 

This is the purging-place ; 
Here shalt thou win to cast off sin 

And come to Christ His grace." 

" By Christ His troth ! " he swore an oath, 

" That will I not," quoth he, 
" Unless thou too, my lover true. 

Therein shalt purged be." 

" Would God," she said, " the lot were laid 

For me to enter here ! 
Alack ! my stead is with the dead. 

All in the place of fear. 



70 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

" But thou light down ; the gate is thrown 

Wide open in the ward ; 
See where they stand on either hand, 

Angels with downdropt sword." 

" By Christ His rest ! " he smote his breast ; 

" No grace of God will I ! 
Rather with thee damned to be 

Than lonely in the sky ! " 

The night closed round, there came a sound 

Of trumpets in the air ; 
The steed leapt on, the fires were gone, 

And on the twain did fare. 

Through storm and night again their flight 
They urge o'er hill and plain : 

What sounds smite clear upon the ear 
Through dusk and wind and rain ? 

"Meseems I heard as if there stirred 

A sound of golden lyres ; 
Methought there came a sweet acclaim 

Of trumpets and of choirs. 

"So sing the saints, where never faints 
The sunlight from the skies ; 

So pulse the lyres among the choirs 
Of God in Paradise." 

A singing light did cleave the night ; 

High up a hill rode they ; 
The veils of heaven for them were riven 

And all the skies poured day. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 71 

The golden gate did stand await, 

The golden town did lie 
Before their sight, the realms of light 

God-builded in the sky. 

The steed did wait before the gate ; 

Sheer up the street looked they ; 
They saw the bliss in heaven that is, 

They saw the saints'* array. 

They saw the hosts upon the coasts 

Of the clear crystal sea ; 
They saw the blest, that in the rest 

Of Christ forever be. 

The choirs of God pulsed full and broad 

Upon the ravished twain ; 
The angels' feet upon the street 

Rang out like golden rain. 

They felt the sea of ecstasy 

That flows about the throne ; 
The bliss of heaven to them was given 

Awhile to look upon. 

Then said the maid, " Be not afraid ; 

God giveth heaven to thee ; 
Light down and rest with Christ His blest, 

And think no more of me 1 " 

Sir Loibich gazed as one amazed, 

Awhile upon the place ; 
Then, with a sigh, he turned his eye 

Upon the maiden's face. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

" By Christ His troth ! " he swore an oath, 

"No heaven for me shall be, 
Except God give that thou shalt live 

Therein for aye with me." 

"Ah, curst am I ! " the maid did cry ; 

" My place thou knowest well ; 
I must begone before the dawn. 

To harbour me in hell." 

" By Christ His rest ! " he beat his breast, 

" Then be it even so ; 
With thee in hell I choose to dwell. 

And share with thee thy woe. 

"Thy sin was mine. By Christ His wine. 

Mine too shall be thy doom ; 
What part have I within the sky, 

And thou in hell's red gloom ? " 

The vision broke, as thus he spoke, 

The city waned away : 
O'er hill and brake, o'er wood and lake 

Once more the darkness lay. 

O'er hill and plain they ride again. 

Under the night's black spell. 
Until there rise against the skies 

The lurid lights of hell. 

The night is wide : they ride and ride ; 

The air with smoke grows crost. 
And through the dark their ears may hark 

The roaring of the lost. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 73 

The dreadful cries they rend the skies, 

The plain is ceiled with fire : 
The flames burst out, around, about ; 

The heats of hell draw nigher. 

Unfeared they ride ; against the side 

Of the red flameful sky 
Grim forms are shown, strange shades upthrown 

From out hell's treasury : 

Black grisly shapes of demon apes, 

Grim human-headed snakes, 
Red creeping things with scaly wings. 

Born of the sulphur lakes. 

The flames swell up out of the cup 

Of endless agony, 
And with the wind there comes entwined 

An awful psalmody ; 

The hymning sound of fiends around, 

Rejoicing in their doom. 
The fearsome glee of things that be 

Glad in their native gloom. 

Fast rode the twain across the plain. 

With hearts all undismayed, 
Until they came where all a-flame 

Hell's gates were open laid. 

The awful stead gaped wide and red. 

To gulph them in its womb : 
There could they see the fiery sea 

And all the souls in doom. 



74 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

There came a breath, like living death, 

Out of the gated way : 
It scorched his face with its embrace, 

It turned his hair to grey. 

Then said the maid, " Art not dismayed ? 

Here is our course fulfilled : 
Wilt thou not turn, nor rest to burn 

With me, as God hath willed ? " 

" By Christ His troth ! " he swore an oath, 
" Thy doom with thee I'll share. 

Here will we dwell, hand-linked in hell, 
Unseparate for e'er." 

He spurred his steed ; the gates of dread 

Gaped open for his course : 
Sudden outrang a trumpet's clang 

And backward fell the horse. 

The ghostly maid did wane and fade, 

The lights of hell did flee ; 
Alone in night the mazed wight 

Stood on the frozen lea. 

Out shone the moon ; the mists did swoon 

Away before his sight. 
And through the dark he saw a spark, 

A welcoming of light. 

Thither he fared, with falchion bared. 

Toward the friendly shine ; 
Eftsoon he came to where a flame 

Did burn within a shrine. 



THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

A candle stood before the Rood, 

Christ carven on the tree : 
Except the shrine, there was no sign 

Of man that he could see. 

Down on his knee low louted he 

Before the cross of wood, 
And for her sprite he saw that night 

Long prayed he to the Rood. 

And as he prayed, with heart down-weighed, 

A wondrous thing befell : 
The air waxed white and through the night 

There rang a silver bell. 

The earth-mists drew before his view ; 

He saw God's golden town ; 
He saw the street, he saw the seat 

From whence God looketh down. 

He saw the gate transfigurate, 

He saw the street of pearl. 
And in the throng, the saints among, 

He saw a gold-haired girl. 

He saw a girl as white as pearl. 

With hair as red as gold : 
He saw her stand among the band 

Of angels manifold. 

He heard her smite the harp's delight,' 

Singing most joyfully. 
And knew his love prevailed above 

Judgment and destiny. 



76 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 

Gone IS the night ; the morn breaks white 

Across the eastward hill ; 
The knightly sire by the dead fire 

Sits in the dawning chill. 

By the hearth white, there sits the knight, 

Dead as the sunken fire ; 
But on his face is writ the grace 

Of his fulfilled desire. 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 

When the end of the enchantment of the summer is at 

hand 
In the month that closes 
The blue midsummer weather, 
When the passionate red roses 
Faint for the heat 
And the lilies fold together 
Their petals pale and sweet,— 
In the burning noontide hazes 
And the golden glory of the flowers that blazes 
Over the happy valleys and the wold, 
There swells to me a breeze ofttimes 
Out of the dreams of old. 
And in the breeze the murmur of old rhymes 
Rises and falls, 

Like some enchanted singing, 
And my tired brow is fanned 
By odours from the halls 

Of dreamland, such as in the moonlight white 
Float round a wandering knight. 
When through the country of the elves he fares 
And marvels at the dances. 

That glitter through the moon-glow, and the ringing 
Of elfin bells ; 

And through the fluttering of the frolic airs, 
In all the song there swells 



78 INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 

A voice well known to me of bygone days, 

That calls me to forsake 

The weary worldly ways 

And as of olden times my way to take 

Into the dreamland of the old romances, 

Into the enchanted land. 

Down falls the evening on the weary plains, 
And I, I stand and wait 
Where, at the verge 
Of the green fields, the stains 
Of sunlight fade upon the trees that surge 
Out of the falling night, 
Dim as the dreamland's gate. 
And so there comes to me a flash of light 
Across the shadow and my faint eyes know 
The robe of her I love 
And the bright crown of tresses aureoled. 
Star-glorious, above 
Her face's rosy snow, 
Spangling the shades with gold. 
" Sweet love, sweet welcome ! I had need of thee, 
Sore, sorest need ! " 
Still doth she grow 

Nearer and lovelier till my arms may press 
Almost her charms and all my soul may feed 
Upon her loveliness. 
But lo ! I clasp the wind 
And in mine arms entwined 
Is nothing but a fair and painted dream, 
" Dear love, why dost thou seem 
And torture me with hope in vain ? " 
And the fair shape doth weep 
And comforteth my pain 



INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 79 

With lovely looks and words of amity ; 

And so my yearnings sleep 

And there is peace once more for me. 

" Come, love," she saith, " the dream-gates gape 
for thee. 
The hour of glamorous delight 
Is come for thee and me. 
Under the silver night 
We shall w^alk hand in hand 
In the enchanted land 

And see the moon-flowers blossom to the sound 
Of the sweet elfin tune, 
As in the days gone by. 

Dost thou not hear the horns of Faerie wound 
Among the elfland bowers 
And all the rush of splendid song that floods 
The silver winds that lie 
And idle in the pearl-work of the moon, 
Woven about the woods ? 
Come, love ! the day is dead. 
With all its weary hours. 
And ours is newly born. 

Thou shalt have easance of thy woes this night. 
Amid the glory of the flowers that swoon 
With magical delight. 
Ere in the sky creeps up the weary morn 
And the pale East grows red."" 

So, in the pale faint flush of the twilight, 

Softly I ope the door 

And hand in hand, 

Across the fields we go, before 

The day is parted from the night, 



8o INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 

Among the cloisters where the tall trees stand 

White in the woodland ways, 

Under the moonlight, till a wall of mist 

Rises before us in the evening haze, 

Silver and amethyst. 

Then doth my love loose hands 

And in the spangled green 

Of the thick moss she stands 

Within the wood-verge, where the sun has been 

And is not faded quite ; 

And to the hovering night 

Sweet mystic lays 

And songs she singeth, very pure and high, 

Until there answereth 

From out the heart-green of the woodbine maze 

A magic singing, as it were 

A woven music of the scents that lie 

In all the night-flowers' breath ; 

And with the song upon the fragrant air 

Strange mystic memories do swell and die 

Of Love and Life and Death. 

The gate of dreamland opens to the singing 
And hand in hand we go, 
My love and I, 

Along the woodways with the elf-songs ringing, 
Under the silver night ; 
And down the vistas of the trees, that lie 
And bathe in the moonlight. 
There swells to us a murmur sweet and low, 
As of some magic river, 

That glitters through its ranks of waving reeds 
And makes the flower-bells quiver 
With haunting: melodies ; 



INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 8i 

And from its ferny nest 

The runnel of a brooklet sings and speeds 

Across the pearlW network of the grass, 

Murmuring its loveliest, 

Songs of a heart at ease. 

That in its joy doth pass 

Into a tune ; and lo ! 

Upon the diamond ripples to our feet 

A little shallop floats, 

Out of a rush-work woven all and wrought 

With pearls and ivory. 

Then in the skiff do we 

Embark and down the silver stream we fleet, 

Under the thronging notes 

Of the night-birds ; 

And as we go. 

The air is all astir with lovely things ; 

Sweet music, twinned and fair with magic words. 

Rises from elfin throats, 

And in the leaves we see the rush and glow 

Of jewelled wings. 

There lies all glamour in the arching banks. 
Through which our river runs : 
Over us wing the dreams 
And in the pale sweet trances of the moon. 
Along the stretching glades, 
The silver fawns of Faerie do pass. 
White in the sweet white beams ; 
And now and then the tune 
Of horns is clear 

And the elf-hunt sweeps by, with glittering ranks. 
Across the velvet grass : 
The king's tall knightly sons 

F 



82 INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 

Ride through the aisles, with many a doufepere ; 

And now there comes a throng 

Of snow-white maids, 

Gold-haired, 

That with sweet song 

And pleasance wander in the fragrant maze 

Of cool woodland ways, 

Sweet one with sweet one paired. 

All through the summer night, 

And win the enchanted air 

Unto melodious trances with the ring 

Of their flute-voices and the rare delight 

Of their gold-rippled hair. 

Soft as the songs they sing. 

The high trees bend above us lovingly. 
As on the stream we go, 
Mingling their boughs above 
Into a flower-starred roof 
Of lovely greenery ; 
And through the night 
The fireflies glow 
And glitter, as it were 
The stars had left their places for delight 
And through the woodland air 
Sped, singing. 

The stream makes music to the cleaving prow, 
Answering the birds' descant 
And the soft ringing 
Of bindweed bells. 
The night is filled with spells 
Of old delight ; 

The summer air is hazed and jubilant 
With ripples of the glory of song-gold 



INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 83 

And elfin blisses ; 

And in the lovely light, 

A maiden more than earthly fair to see, 

With moon-webs aureoled, 

My lady sits by me. 

Answering my thought with kisses. 

The river shallows through the grass and flowers, 
Athwart the waning night ; 
And now the boat is gone 
From underneath our feet ; 
And eke the stream has faded 
Into the ripple of the white moonlight. 
So, in the midwood bowers 
I stand alone 

In the still time and sweet 

Before the hour when night and morning meet. 
Sweet sooth, the moon has braided 
The air with pearl 
And down the haunted glades 
The shadows dance and whirl 
Among the sheeny hosts of the grass-blades, 
In the cool glitter of the time : 

And lo 1 my thought takes rhythm from their dances 
And to my lips comes rhyme 
And many a lovely tune, 
Such as the minstrels of the old romances 
Sang to the moon. 

My singing echoes through the elfland aisles, 
Waking the silver bells. 
That lie and dream in the flower-sleep. 
Deep in the mossy dells ; 
And as I sing, 



84 INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 

The timid rabbits creep 

From all their soft warm nests among the fern ; 

And in the wood-deeps, gold and silver strewn, 

The fawns stand listening. 

Then down the columned way, 

Through which the moonlight smiles. 

There rings the trample of a horse's feet. 

Nearer it grows along the ripple-play, 

Beside the tinkling burn. 

Until the silver armour of a knight 

Shines in the moon 

And a clear voice trolls songs of war and love. 

Ditties of strange and mystical delight, 

That through the trees do rove. 

Telling of Day and Night, 

Of Love and Life and Death, 

With strains as bright and sweet 

As is the linnet's breath. 

My weak song ceases as I look on him : 
" Fair knight. 

Fair minstrel, teach me all thy might. 
I know thee as of old : 

Clear through the twilight of the legends dim, 
Thy name like gold 
Doth shine 

And the fair nobleness of thy white life 
Sweetens the lips of men, 
O Percivale, Christ's knight ! " 
And then he gazes on me with mild eyes, 
And the clear rapture floods me like a wine 
Of some old Orient tale. 
Purging my heart from sighs 
And memories of strife. 



INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 85 

And so he rides into the gloaming pale, 

Scattering on every hand 

Sweet singings, till they die upon the ear. 

Then, looking round again, 

I see the night has ceased 

And in the dawning drear 

My dream fades from me, as the skies are spanned 

By the red bars of morn 

And in the East 

The cold grey day is born. 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



FROM "IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN" 

Gluck's "Armide," 
Act II., Scene 3 : Introduction and Aria. 

This is the land of dreams : these waving woods 
And the dim sunht haze that hangs on all 
And the clear jewels of the murmuring stream ; 
These flowered nooks through which the bird-notes fall, 
Like silver spring-showers, — here sweet silence broods, 
And here I dream. 

Prone in the shadow of the flowers I lie 
And watch the lizards glitter through the grass 
And listen to the tinkle of the stream : 
Unmindful of the weary hours that pass. 
Here do I lie and let the years go by : 
/ dream and I dream. 

Life and the world forsake me in the calm 
Of these enchanted woodways, green and still. 
Wherein the very sunlight''s wavering gleam 
Sleeps on the lazy ripples of the rill. 
And in the mist of the droopt flowers' faint balm 
/ dream and I dream. 

There is no future in these glades of ours. 
Nor any whisper of the stern to-morrow ; 
Life is a woven thing of a sunbeam : 
Nor in the grass is any snake of sorrow, 
Nor comes remorse anigh where 'mid the flowers 
/ dream and I dream. 

86 



"IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN" 87 

Here are the bird-songs neither glad nor sad : 
Sleep drones in every note of their delight ; 
Not even throstles with the olden theme 
Of tender grieving sadden the pale night ; 
But veiled is all their song, as "'twere they had 
Dream within dream. 

Here are no roses of the sharp sweet scent, 
Nor the sad violets' enchanted breath, 
Nor jasmines cluster by the slumbering stream ; 
But the drowsed hyacinths with umbels bent 
And the gold-hearted lilies of sweet death. 
Flowers of a dream. 

I know not if life is with me or how 
I come to lie and sleep away the years : 
I only know, but yesterday did seem 
Sad life amid a swarm of sordid fears 
And hopes. Then came the god of Sleep — and now 
/ dream and I dream. 

There swell faint breaths to me of earthly jar, 
As 'twere a wild bee humming in the thyme, 
And the dim sounds of what pale mortals deem 
The aims of life come back like olden rhyme 
Upon mine ears, whilst, from the world afar, 
/ dream and I dream. 

I hear the sweep of pinions in the air 
And see dim glories glitter through the skies. 
As ir some angel from the blue extreme 
Of heaven strewed gold and balm of memories 
Upon the woods and the dim flowers that bear 
Spells of a dream. 



88 "IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN" 

There hover faces o'er me oftentimes 
Of lovely w^ornen that I knevi^ of old, 
Set like a jew^el in a golden stream 
Of fairest locks ; and from the aureoled 
Sweet lips there sw^ell faint echoes of old rhymes ; 
(/ dream and I dream). 

And sw^eet v^^hite arms enclose me as I lie, 
(Still do I lie and fold me in a sleep) ; 
Yea, and faint-fluttering tresses, all a-gleam, 
Fall dow^n about my brow full tenderly 
And wind me in a glamour soft and deep. 
(/ dream and I dream.) 

Yet is there nothing that therein is rife 
That for the world forsaken makes me sigh. 
More than the empty motes of a sunbeam. 
Unheeding them, in the dim dream I lie ; 
Far from the flutter of the wings of Life, 
/ dream and I dream. 

When wraiths of pleasure are so true and leal. 
Why should I seek for flesh and blood to love me ? 
Who shall tell what things are and what things seem ? 
I am content, unquestioning, to feel 
The folding of the shadow-arms above me. 
/ dream and I dream. 



From " Ballads and Romances." 



FROM "THE PACT OF THE 
TWIN GODS" 



So was there endless strife, 
By land and sea, 

'Twixt the gods Death and Life ; 
And unto neither fell the mastery. 

Then, on this wise, 
After a resting-while, 
Unto the frosty sire 
Spake, with a dawn-sky's smile, 
The great god Life, 
Saying, " My brother. 
What boots it that so long 
We have done hurt unto each other 
And to the world. 

And have so often and so sore wrought wrong 
To the sad race of men, — that we have hurled 
The fair sky-orders from their base with fight. 
So I, a god, of thee, another god 
As great, might have the mastery ? 
Now, of a truth, I see 
That we are surely equal in our might 
And all these years have trod 
The battle all in vain ; 



90 "THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 

For Death and Life must be 

And may not change or wane, 

Nor the one have domain 

Over the other's fee. 

Wherefore I pray of thee that we do take 

Joined hands once more, 

And make 

A thing that shall be for a covenant 

Betwixt us against war 

And lawless strife ; 

A thing that shall of both our souls partake 

And all our attributes 

Shall share, 

As a fair tree that, by the gardener's knife 

Graffed to a plant of various kind, doth bear 

Twy-natured fruits ; 

A thing that shall be sad as violets' breath 

And blithesome as the breeze 

That in the spring, 

Among the blossomed trees, 

Doth float and sing ; 

That shall be sadder and more sweet than Death 

And gladder and more sweet than Life, 

That as a king betwixt us twain shall sit 

And with flower-bands 

Linking our hands. 

Shall lead us forth upon our various way, 

As two fair twins that play 

With joined hearts and lives together knit 

And have no thought of harm." 

And so the pact was sworn between the two. 

That they should work to do 

This charm ; 

And Life and Death clasped hands on it. 



"THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 91 

Then Life brought flowers and breezes and sun-gold 

And juices of the vine ; 
And Death brought silver of the moonlight cold 

And the pale sad w^oodbine. 

Life brought clear honey of the buxom bees 

And fruits of autumn-time ; 
And Death brought amber from the murmuring seas 

And fretw^ork of the rime. 

God Life did rob the jasmine of its balm, 

Death the pale lily's bells ; 
Life brought a handful of the summer-calm, 

Death of the vi^ind that swells 

And sighs about the winter-wearied hills ; 

Life the spring heaven's blue, 
Death brought the grey, that in the autumn fills 

The skies with its sad hue. 

And with these things of mingling life and death 

Did the twin gods upbuild 
A golden shape, which drew the goodliest breath 

That ever bosom filled : 

For it was lovesome as the risen sun 

And pale as ended night. 
Glad as the glance of an immortal one 

And mild as the moon's light. 

The form of it was white as is the snow 

When the pale winter reigns, 
And rosy-tinted as the even-glow 

After the April rains. 



92 "THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 

The charm of day was in its violet eyes 

And eke the spells of night ; 
Therein one read of the gold Orient skies 

And the faint spring's delight. 

And for a voice Life lent it all the tune 
That from lark-throats doth rise ; 

And pale Death added to it, for a boon, 
The sad sw^eet night-bird's sighs. 

Its hands were warm as life and soft as death. 

Rosy as flowers and white 
As the pale lucent stone that covereth 

The graves in the moon's sight. 

Its hair was golden as the sheer sun's shine. 

When the hot June rides far, 
And tender-coloured as the hyaline 

Of the pale midnight star. 

Red was its mouth as is the damask rose 

And purple as night-shade. 
Most glad and sad, fulfilled of lovesome woes 

And joys that never fade. 

Swift were its rosy golden-sandalled feet. 

Yet lingering as the night, 
And the soft wings that on the air did beat 

Were of the windflower's white. 

And on its head they set a double crown, 

Golden and silver wrought. 
Wherein sweet emeralds for hope were sown 

And amethysts for thought. 



"THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 93 

Thus did the two gods make this lovesome thing, 

To stand betwixt them twain ; 
And therewithal they crowned the fair shape king 

O'er them and suzerain. 

And from that time there hath no more been strife 

'Twixt these two gods of might ; 
For evermore betwixten Death and Life 

That creature of deh'ght 

Hath gone about the weary worldly ways, 

Holding them hand in hand. 
So that Death never on a mortal lays 

His finger, but there stand 

Beside him Life and that sweet shape which they 

Have for their master made ; 
And on like guise, when dawn hath lit the day. 

Death walketh in the shade. 

Hard by the sun and all the gauds of life : 

And by them, without cease. 
The winged shape goes and orders all their strife 

To harmony and peace. 

And if one ask which god he cherisheth 

His brother god above, 
Methinks his heart beats franklier for Death ; 

For lo ! his name is Love. 



CHANT ROYAL OF THE 
GOD OF LOVE 

O MOST fair God ! O Love both new and old, 
That wast before the flowers of morning blew, 
Before the glad sun in his mail of gold 
Leapt into light across the first day's dew, 
That art the first and last of our delight, 
That in the blue day and the purple night 
Holdest the heart of servant and of king. 
Lord of liesse, sovran of sorrowing. 
That in thy hand hast heaven's golden key 
And hell beneath the shadow of thy wing, 
Thou art my Lord to who?n I bend the knee ! 



What thing rejects thine empery ? Who so bold 

But at thine altars in the dusk they sue ? 

Even the strait pale Goddess, silver-stoled, 

That kissed Endymion when the spring was new. 

To thee did homage in her own despite. 

When, in the shadow of her wings of white, 

She slid down trembling from her mooned ring 

To where the Latmian youth lay slumbering, 

And in that kiss put off cold chastity. 

Who but acclaim, with voice and pipe and string. 

Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ? 



CHANT ROYAL OF THE GOD OF LOVE 95 

Master of men and gods, in every fold 

Of thy wide vans, the sorceries that renew 

The labouring earth tranced with the winter's 

cold 
Lie hid, the quintessential charms that woo 
The souls of flowers, slain with the sullen might 
Of the dead year, and draw them to the light. 
Balsam and blessing to thy garments cling : 
Skyward and seaward, whilst thy white palms 

fling 
Their spells of healing over land and sea. 
One shout of homage makes the welkin ring. 
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 



I see thee throned aloft : thy fair hands hold 

Myrtles for joy and euphrasy and rue : 

Laurels and roses round thy white brows rolled, 

And in thine eyes the royal heaven's hue : 

But in thy lip's clear colour, ruddy bright. 

The heart's blood burns of many a hapless wight. 

Thou art not only fair and sweet as spring : 

Terror and beauty, fear and wondering, 

Meet on thy front, amazing all who see. 

All men do praise thee, ay, and every thing : 

Thou art ?ny Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 



I fear thee, though I love. Who shall behold 
The sheer sun blazing in the orbed blue. 
What while the noontide over hill and wold 
Flames like a fire, except his mazed view 
Wither and tremble ? So thy splendid sight 
Fills me with mingled gladness and affright. 



96 CHANT ROYAL OF THE GOD OF LOVE 

Thy visage haunts me in the wavering 
Of dreams, and in the daw^n, awakening, 
I feel thy splendour streaming full on me. 
Both joy and fear unto thy feet I bring : 
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 



ENVOI 

God above gods, high and eternal king ! 
Whose praise the symphonies of heaven sing, 
I find no whither from thy power to flee 
Save in thy pinions' vast o'ershadowing : 
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee / 

From *' Exotica." 



RONDEL 

Kiss me, sweetheart ; the spring is here 

And love is lord of you and me. 

The bluebells beckon each passing bee ; 
The wild wood laughs to the flowered year : 
There is no bird in brake or brere 

But to his little mate sings he, 
" Kiss me, sweetheart ; the spring is here 

And love is lord of you and me." 

The blue sky laughs out sweet and clear ; 
The missel-thrush upon the tree 
Pipes for sheer gladness loud and free ; 
And I go singing to my dear, 
" Kiss me, sweetheart ; the spring is here 
And love is lord of you and me." 

From " Exotica." 



97 



MADRIGAL GAI 

The summer-sunshine comes and goes ; 
The bee hums in the heart of the rose : 
Heart of my hope, the year is sweet ; 
The lilies lighten about thy feet. 

A new light glitters on land and sea ; 
The turtles couple on every tree. 
Light of my life, the fields are fair ; 
Gossamers tangle thy golden hair. 

The air with kisses is blithe and gay ; 
Love is so sweet in the middle May. 
Sweet of my soul, the brook is blue ; 
Thine eyes with heaven have pierced it through. 

Now is the time for kisses, now 
When bird-songs babble from every bough. 
Sweetest, my soul is a bird that sips 
Honey of heaven from out thy lips. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



98 



MADRIGAL TRISTE 

If we should meet 
You and I, 
My sweet, 
In some fair land where under the blue sky 
The scents of the fresh violets never die 
And spring is deathless under deathless feet, 
Should we clasp hands and kiss. 
My sweet. 
With the old bliss ? 
Would our eyes meet 
With the same passionate frankness as of old, 
When the fresh spring was in the summer's gold ? 
Ah, no ! my dear. 
Woe's me ! our kisses are but frore ; 
The blossoms of our early love are sere 
And will be fresh no more. 



If we should stand, 
You and I, 
My sweet, 
On that bright strand 
Where day fades never and the golden street 
Rings to the music of the angels' feet. 
Would our rent hearts find solace in the sky ? 



loo MADRIGAL TRISTE 

Should we lose heed, 

My dear, 
Of the sad years ? 
Would our souls cease to bleed 
For the past anguish and our eyes grow clear. 
In heaven, from all the furrows of the tears ? 
Ah, no ! my dear. 
Needs must we sigh and stand aloof. 

Once riven, 
God could not heal our love. 
Even in heaven. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



THE KING'S SLEEP 

"Bury me deep," said the king, 
" Deep in the mountain's womb ; 
For I am weary of strife. 
Hollow me out a tomb, 
So that the golden sun 
Pierce not the blackness dun 
Where I shall lie and sleep ; 
Lest haply the light should bring 
Again the stirring of life. 
Or ever the time be come 
To waken. Bury me deep. 



" Let not the silver moon 
Search out the graven stone 
That lieth above my head. 
In the tomb where I sleep alone. 
Nor any ray of a star 
Come in the night to unbar 
The gates of my prison-sleep. 
I shall awake too soon 
From the quiet sleep of the dead, 
When the trumps of the Lord are blown. 
If you love me, bury me deep. 



102 THE KING'S SLEEP 

"I feel in my heart of hearts 
There cometh a time for me, 
Far in the future's gloom, 
When there no more may be 
Rest for my weary head, 
When over my stony bed 
The wind of the Lord shall sweep 
And scatter the tomb in parts 
And the voice of the angel of doom 
Shall thrill through and waken me 
Out of my stirless sleep. 

" For a king that has been a king, 
That has loved the people he swayed, 
Has bound not his brows in vain 
With the gold and the jewelled braid ; 
Has held not in his right hand 
The symbol that rules the land, 
The sceptre of God for nought. 
He may not escape the thing 
He compassed : in death again 
His sleep is troubled and weighed 
By wraiths of the deeds he wrought. 

" And if he has evil done, 
There may he lie and rest 
Under the storied stone, 
Slumber, uneasy, opprest 
By the ghosts of his evil deeds. 
Till Death with his pallid steeds 
Have smitten the world with doom : 
And the moon and the stars and the sun 
Will leave him to sleep alone, 
Fearing to shine on him, lest 
The wicked arise from the tomb ! 



THE KING'S SLEEP 103 

"But if the ruler be wise, 
Have wrought for his people's good 
Sadly and like a god ; 
Whenever the plague-mists brood 
Over the kingless land, 
When fire and famine and brand 
Are loose and the people weep, 
They cry to the king to rise ; 
And under the down-pressed sod, 
He hears their pitiful cries 
And stirs in his dreamful sleep. 

" And the sun and the stars and the moon 
Look down through the creviced tomb 
And rend with their arrows of light 
The sepulchre's friendly gloom, 
Stirring the life again 
In pulse and muscle and vein ; 
And the winds, that murmur and sweep 
Over his resting-place, croon 
And wail in his ear : 'The night 
Is past and the day is come ; 
O king, arise from thy sleep ! ' 

" The sleeper murmurs and sighs, — 
Rest is so short and sweet, 
Life is so long and sad, — 
And he throws off his winding-sheet : 
The gates of the tomb unclose 
And out in the world he goes, 
Weary and careful, to reap 
The harvest, or hero-wise 
To garner the good, and the bad 
To burn, ere the Ruler shall mete 
Him yet a portion of sleep. 



I04 THE KING'S SLEEP 

" Great is the Master of Life 
And I bow my head to His will ! 
When He needs me, the Lord will call 
And I shall arise and fill 
The span of duty once more. 
But now I am weary and sore 
With travail and need of sleep ; 
And I fear lest the clangour and strife 
Upon me again should fall, 
Ere sleep shall have healed my ill. 
I pray you, bury me deep ! " 

So the good king was dead. 
And the people wrought him a grave 
Deep in the mountain's womb. 
In a place where the night-winds rave 
And the centuries come and go, 
Unheard of the dead below ; 
Where never a ray might creep ; 
In the rocks where the rubies red 
And the diamonds grow in the gloom, 
They hollowed the king a tomb, 
Low and vaulted and deep. 

And there they brought him to lie : 
With wailing and many a tear, 
The people bore to the place 
The good king's corpse on the bier. 
They perfumed his funeral glooms 
With lily and amaranth blooms, 
In a silence sweet and deep ; 
They piled up the rocks on high 
And there, with a smile on his face, 
In doubt and sadness and fear, 
They left the monarch to sleep. 



THE KING'S SLEEP 105 

Onward the centuries rolled 
And the king slept safely and sound 
In the heart of the faithful earth, 
In the still death-slumbers bound : 
And the sun and the moon and the stars 
Looked wistfully down on the bars 
Of the sepulchre quiet and deep, 
Where he lay, while the world grew old 
And death succeeded to birth, 
And heard not an earthly sound 
And saw not a sight in his sleep. 

And it came to pass that the Wind 
Spake once, and said to the Sun : 
" Oh giver of summer-life ! 
Is not the time fordone 
And the measure of God fulfilled. 
Wherein He, the Lord, hath willed 
The king should arise from sleep ? 
I go in the night, and I find 
The folk are weary of strife, 
And joyless is every one 
And many an eye doth weep ! " 

But the Sun said, shaking his hair, 
His glorious tresses of gold : 
" Brother, the grave is deep ; 
And the rocks so closely do fold 
The king, that we may not win 
A place where to enter in 
And trouble his slumber deep. 
And the Wind said : "Where I fare. 
The rays of the Sun can creep. 
Through the thin worm-holes in the mould. 
And rouse the king from his sleep ! "*' 



io6 THE KING'S SLEEP 

The Moon and the Stars and the Sun 
Arose and shone on the grave, 
And it was as the Wind had said : 
Yea, up from the vaulted cave 
The w^orms had crept in the night 
And opened a w^ay for the light 
And the vs^inds of the air to creep. 
And they entered, one by one ; 
Yea, down to the house of the dead, 
Through cranny and rock they clave. 
To wake the king from his sleep. 

And the king turned round in his dream. 
As he felt the terrible rays 
Creeping down through the mould 
In the track of the false worms' ways ; 
And he quaked as the light drew near 
And he called to the earth for fear. 
To aid him his rest to keep ; 
For the time he had slept did seem 
But an hour, nor the wheels of gold 
Had circled the span of days 
When he should arise from sleep. 

But the mother all faithful heard 
The dreaming call of the king. 
And she seized on the wandering rays 
And of each one she made a thing 
Of jewelries, such as grow 
In the dim earth-caves below. 
From the light kept long and deep ; 
For she loved the man and she feared 
Lest the fateful glitter and blaze 
Of the light too early should bring 
The dead from his goodly sleep. 



THE KING'S SLEEP 107 

She moulded pearls of the moon 
And diamonds of the sun ; 
Rubies and sapphires she made 
Of the star-rays, every one. 
There was never an one might 'scape 
Some luminous jewel-shape 
Of all the rays that did creep 
Down through the earth, too soon 
To rend the sepulchre's shade ; 
But she seized on them all, and none 
Might trouble the dead man's sleep. 

Then did she mould him a crown 
Of silver and cymophane 
And in it the gems she set, 
For a sign that never again. 
Till God should beckon to him. 
On the silence quiet and dim 
Of the sepulchre low and deep 
Should the rays of the stars look down 
To trouble his rest. And yet 
The centuries wax and wane 
And the king is still in his sleep. 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



THE DEAD MASTER 

A Threnody 



Quis desideiio sit pudor aut modus 
Tam cari capitis? 



Wast thou not with us, when the night departed, 
O strong sweet singer that art ours no more ! 
Was not the harping thine that first gave o'er 

The song of wailing, when the daybreak parted 

And the glad heavens broke open, shore from shore, 
Sun-crowned and iris-hearted ? 



Didst thou not smite the strings to jubilation, 
Hymning the grand sweet scope of the To-be ? 
Did not our midnight dole and doubting flee 

From thy glad strength and all our lamentation 
Swell with thy song into an ecstasy 
Of aspiration ? 

No more we wept and wailed for Life''s undoing. 
Following the golden notes that brake from thee, 
Riding star-crowned upon that sudden sea 

Which from thy soul poured forth for our renewing 
Oceans of hope and jubilance, that we 
Drank of, ensuing. 

^ Walter Savage Landor. 
io8 



THE DEAD MASTER 109 

Didst thou not rend for us the gloom descending, 
Scatter the veils of doubting from our sight, 
Bring to our lives again the flov^^er-delight, 

Bird-songs and field-scents in thy verses blending ? 
Didst thou not save our spirits from the night 
Stern and impending ? 

Lo ! and the night has bound thee, O our master ! 

Lo ! and the shadow^s gather round thy place ! 

Shall we then no more look upon thy face ? 
Surely the shades will fold to night the faster, 

Surely Death's torches quicklier replace 
Life's lamp of alabaster. 

Shall we then no more see thee, O our singer, 
Passing the love of women to our souls ? 
Shall then our lives be darkened and our goals 

Deep in the grey dim distance fade and linger, 
Since that no more thy voice our steps controls. 
No more thy finger 

Points and is clear along the hills that darken, 
Clear with the distant glimmer of the day ? 
Will then the clifF-walls never roll away, 

That thy song's sweetness hide from us that hearken. 
Us that are weary in Life's mazed way, 
Weary of mists that starken ? 

Have we then heard thy singing for the last time 
Shape us the glories of the olden days ? 
Have we a last time listened to the lays 

Wherein thou scaledst the ancient heavens for pastime 
And in the future's iridescent haze 
Buildedst the past-time ? 



no THE DEAD MASTER 

Can we forget thee, high sweet soul and faithful, 
Homer and Pindar of our modern time, 
Lord of our thought and leader of our rhyme. 

Thou that didst clear the air that was so deathful, 
Filled it anew with scents of rose and thyme. 
Made it bird-breathful ? 

Thou that for us wast some sublime Silenus, 
Full to the lips of wise and lovely words, 
Shaping to song the speech of flowers and birds, 

Wast as a god on whose strength we might lean us, 
And, our Apollo, piped to us thy herds 
Songs of Camoenus ! 

What doth it irk us if we never saw thee, 

Knew but thy presence as a god's afar. 

Heard but thy song as music of a star ? 
Were we not with thee, part in thee and of thee ? 

Were not our souls akin to thine and are ? 
Did we not love thee ? 

With thee we lived in some enchanted Arden, 
Glad with the echo of the wood-nymphs'* feet, 
Bright with old memories, very strange and sweet. 

That in the shade of that Armida's garden 

Did from our cold pale daylight hide and fleet, 
Where all things harden. 

Thou wast no wailer, no sweet-voiced unmanner. 
That for weak men within an idle clime 
Builded vain dreams to sweet and idle rhyme : 

Thou hast built souls after the antique manner. 

Souls that shall march through many a lapse of time. 
Bearing thy banner. 



THE DEAD MASTER iii 

Thy standard with its burden high and golden, 
Daring to love and loving, knovv^ no shame, 
Wit to reject the let of age-old blame, 

Faith to rekindle altar-ashes olden. 

Fan the old love of Nature to full flame. 
Long unbeholden. 

Friend, we have mourned and longed for thee with 
mourning ; 
Poet, our ears are sad with listening. 
Straining for songs no breeze shall ever bring ; 
Master, thy lapse has dulled with dusk Life's morning, 
Dimmed with black death each bright and lovely thing. 
That in the adorning 

Of thy high verse had erst been wont to sparkle, 
Glitter and glow with glories of the past ; 
Spirit of song and flame of faith, the blast 

Of thine eclipse has reft from us, anarchal, 

Robbed us with thee of all the things thou wast, 
Bard patriarchal ! 

Master, in vain we listen for thy singing. 
Listen and long and languish for desire ! 
Unto our ears no echoes of thy lyre 

Pulse from the darkness, no glad breeze comes bringing 
Voices, no sparkles of the ancient fire 
Reach us, wide-winging. 

Will then thy song no more translate our yearning. 
Mould our harsh cries to music of the spheres ? 
Will thy verse glitter no more with our tears ? 

Has then the sun of thy bright soul, whose burning 
Lightened so oft the midnight of our fears. 
Set, unreturning ? 



112 THE DEAD MASTER 

Or hast thou found thy dream in plains supernal, 
Shapes of fair women, forms of noble men, 
That, at the magic summons of thy pen. 

Did, from the snows and solitudes hybernal, 
Where they so long had slept, seek out again 
The meadows vernal ? 

Do the long lapses of the ghost-land, lying 
Stretched out beyond the portals of the grave, 
Teem with fresh fruits and flowers for thee and wave 

With the clear shapes of thine old dreams undying ? 
Has the dark flood been powerful to lave 
From thy soul sighing. 

Grief and the very memory of grieving, 
Hope and the very thought of wearying 
After the glow and glory thou didst sing ? 

Hast in the air such unimagined giving. 
Splendour and flush of every godlike thing, 
Wherefor thy living 

Struggled and wearied in the bitter days ? 
Dost thou live out thy phantasies of gold 
Under Greek skies and Attic woods of old. 

Walk, crowned with myrtle, in the Dorian ways. 
Peopled with all the dreams that did unfold 
In thy high lays ? 

Surely, this thing alone could hold thee speechless, 

Surely, in this alone couldst thou forget 

Us that are left to struggle in the net 
Of the sad world, to feel the days grow each less 

Sweet to our souls, to weary with the fret, 
Dumb and beseechless. 



THE DEAD MASTER 113 

Surely, thy soul would yearn to us with longing : 
Surely, no grave could keep thy voice from us. 
Were not this so. The silence dolorous 

Surely is voiceful of the years prolonging 

Long bliss for thee and us to come, that thus 
Unto the thronging, 

Unto the cry and clamour of our yearning, 
Still is the air and stirless is the light, 
That from the grey grim bosom of the night 

Comes back no sign or voice of thy returning. 
Echoes no memory of the old delight. 
Weariness spurning ! 

Well, be it so ; mayhap, some day, unknowing. 
We too shall rest and come to where thou art. 
Press thee again full-raptured to our heart, 

Gaze in thine eyes with eyes no less fire-glowing 
And in like bliss forget the olden smart, 
The weary going 

Friendless and dumb about the ways of being. 
Cast off the memory of the years we sighed 
After thy song and presence sunny-eyed. 

In the new splendour of thy lays, the seeing 
All the old hopes fulfilled and sanctified. 
No longer fleeing 

Mirage-like from us through the earthly hazes ; 
Haply we too shall leave our olden pains 
Off with our life and all its weary stains, 

Put on like joy amid the light that blazes 

There, the glad day that floods those golden plains. 
Those songful mazes ! 

H 



114 THE DEAD MASTER 

Till then, farewell ! The joy shall be the greater 
When we clasp hands and hearts to part no more 
For that the long lone life has been so sore, 

For that no sign of thee to death played traitor. 
Sharper shall be the bliss for us in store, 
Sweeter if later. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



A FUNERAL SONG FOR THEOPHILE 
GAUTIER 

What shall our song be for the mighty dead, 

For this our master that is ours no more ? 

Lo ! for the dead was none of those that wore 
The laurel lightly on a heedless head, 
Chanting a song of idle lustihead 

Among the sun-kissed roses on the shore : 

This our beloved, that is gone before, 
Was of the race of heroes battle-bred 
That, from the dawn-white to the sunset-red, 
Fought in the front of war. 

Lo ! this was he that in the weary time, 
In many a devious and darkling way, 
Through dusk or doubt and thunder of dismay. 

Held our hearts hopeful with his resonant rhyme. 

Lifting our lives above the smoke and slime 
Into some splendid summer far away. 
Where the sun brimmed the chalice of the day 

With gold of heaven and the accordant chime 

Of woods and waters to the calm sublime 
Carolled in roundelay. 

This was our poet in the front of faith ; 
Our singer gone to his most sweet repose. 
Sped to his summer from our time of snows 

And winter winding all the world with death. 



ii6 A FUNERAL SONG 

Who shall make moan or utter mournful breath 
That this our noblest one no longer knows 
Our evil place of toil and many woes, 

Lying at the last where no voice entereth ? 

Who shall weave for him other than a wreath 
Of laurel and of rose ? 

Hence with the cypress and the funeral song ! 
Let not the shrill sound of our mourning mar 
His triumph that upon the Immortals' car 

Passes, star-crowned ; but from the laurelled throng, 

That stands await, let every voice prolong 
A noise of jubilance that from afar 
Shall hail in heaven the new majestic star 

That rises with a radiance calm and strong, 

To burn for ever unobscured among 

The courts where the gods are. 

Ay, let the hautboys and the clarions blow. 
The air rain roses and the sky resound 
With harpings of his peers that stand around. 

What while the splendours of the triumph go 

Alo^g the streets and through the portico. 

I, too, who loved the dead, as from the ground 

The glow-worm loves the star, will stand, browbound 

With winter roses, in the sunset-glow. 

And make thin music, fluting soft and low 
Above his funeral mound. 

I, too, who loved him, from beyond the sea. 
Add my weak note to that sublime acclaim 
That, soaring with the silver of his name. 

Shall shake the heavens with splendid harmony, 



A FUNERAL SONG 117 

Till all who listen bend in awe the knee, 

Seeing a giant's spirit, like a flame, 

Remounting to that heaven from which it came. 
And many weep for very shame to see 
The majesty they knew not till 'twas free 
From earthly praise or blame. 

Hail, O our master ! From the hastening hours 
This one we set above its grey-veiled peers, 
Armed with thy name against the night that nears. 

We crown it with the glory of the flowers. 

We wind it with all magic that is ours 

Of song and hope and jewel-coloured tears ; 
We charm it with our love from taint of fears ; 

We set it high against the sky that lowers, 

To burn, a love-sign, from the topmost towers, 
Through glad and sorry years. 

From "Songs of Life and Death." 



PRELUDE TO HAFIZ 

Hither, hither, O ye weary, O ye sons of wail and woe, 
Ye, who've proved the hollow shimmer of this world of 

fleeting show. 
Ye, whoVe seen your hearts' hopes vanish, like the first- 
lings of the snow ; 

Ye, who scorn the brutal bondage of this world of 

misbelief. 
Ye, who bear the royal blazon of the heart afire with 

grief, 
Hearken, hearken to my calling ; for I proffer you relief. 

I am he whom men call teller of the things that none 

may see. 
Tongue of speech of the Unspoken, I am he that holds 

the key 
Of the treasuries of vision and the mines of mystery. 

I am he that knows the secrets of the lands beyond the 

goal, 
I am he that solves the puzzles of the sorrow-smitten soul, 
I am he that giveth gladness from the wine-enlightened 

bowl ; 

I am he that heals the wounded and the weary of their 

scars, 
I am Hafiz, son of Shiraz, in the pleasant land of Fars, 
Where I flung my flouting verses in the faces of the stars. 



PRELUDE TO HAFIZ 119 

See, my hands are full of jewels from the worlds beyond 
the tomb : 

Here be pearls of perfect passion from the middle dream- 
land's womb ; 

Here be amethysts of solace, for the purging of your 
gloom : 

Here be rubies red and radiant, of the colour of the 

heart, 
Here be topazes sun-golden, such as rend the dusk 

apart. 
Here be sapphires steeped in heaven, for the salving of 

your smart. 

If your souls are sick with sorrow, here is that which 

shall appease ; 
If your lips are pale with passion, here is that which 

hath the keys 
To the sanctuaries of solace and the halidomcs of ease. 

Let the bigot tend his idols, let the trader buy and 

sell ; 
Ears are theirs that cannot hearken to the tale I have 

to tell, 
Eyes that cannot see the treasures which are open to 

my spell. 

Where is he that's heavy-laden ? Lo, [my hand shall 

give him peace. 
Where are they that dwell in darkness ? I am he that 

can release. 
Where is he that's world-bewildered ? I will give his 

cares surcease. 



I20 PRELUDE TO HAFIZ 

Hither, hither with your burdens ! I have that shall 

make them light. 
I have salves shall purge the earth-mists from the 

fountains of your sight ; 
I have spells shall raise the morning in the middest of 

your night. 

Come, O doubt-distracted brother ! Come, O heavy- 

burthened one ! 
Come to me and I will teach you how the goal of rest 

is won ; 
Come, and I will cleave your darkness with the splendours 

of the sun. 

Leave your striving never-ending ; let the weary world 

go by; 
Let its bondmen hug their fetters, let its traders sell and 

buy; 
With the roses in the garden we will sojourn, you and L 

Since the gladness and the sadness of the world alike are 

nought, 
I will give you wine to drink of from the ancient wells 

of thought. 
Where it"'s lain for ages ripening, whilst the traders sold 

and bought. 

What is heaven, that we should seek it ? Wherefore 

question How or Why ? 
See, the roses are in blossom ; see, the sun is in the sky ; 
See, the land is lit with summer ; let us live before we 

die. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



EPILOGUE 

TO THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS 
AND ONE NIGHT 

Twelve years this day, — a day of winter, dreary 

With drifting snows, when all the world seemed dead 

To spring and hope, — it is since, worn and weary 
Of doubt within and strife without, I fled 

From the mean workday miseries of existence, 
From spites that slander and from hates that lie, 

Into the dreamland of the Orient distance. 
Under the splendours of the Syrian sky. 

And in the enchanted realms of Eastern story. 
Far from the lovelessness of modern times. 

Garnered the rainbow-remnants of old glory 
That linger yet in those ancestral climes. 

And now, the long task done, the journey over, 
From that far home of immemorial calms. 

Where, as a mirage, on the sky-marge hover 
The desert and its oases of palms. 

Lingering, I turn me back, with eyes reverted, 

To this stepmother world of daily life. 
As one by some long pleasant dream deserted. 

That wakes anew to dull unlovely strife. 



122 EPILOGUE 

Yet, if none other weal the quest have brought me, 

The long beloved labour now^ at end. 
This gift of gifts the untravelled East hath brought me, 

The knowledge of a new and valued friend. 

February 5, 1889. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 



The day is dead, the night draws on, 

The shadows gather fast : 
'Tis many an hour yet to the dawn, 

Till Hallow-tide be past. 

Till Hallow-tide be past and sped, 

The night is full of fear ; 
For then, they say, the restless dead 

Unto the live draw near. 

Between the Saints' day and the Souls' 
The dead wake in the mould ; 

The poor dead, in their grassy knolls 
They lie and are a-cold. 

They think upon the live that sit 

And drink the Hallow-ale, 
Whilst they lie stark within the pit. 

Nailed down with many a nail. 

And sore they wonder if the thought 

Live in them of the dead ; 

And sore with wish they are distraught 

To feel the firelight red. 
123 



124 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

Betwixt the day and yet the day 
The Saints and Souls divide, 

The dead folk rise out of the clay 
And wander far and wide. 

They wander o''er the sheeted snow, 
Chill with the frore of death, 

Until they see the windows glow 
With the fire's ruddy breath. 

And if the cottage door be fast 
And but the light win out, 

All night, until their hour is past. 
The dead walk thereabout. 

And all night long, the live folk hear 
Their windy song of sighs 

And waken all for very fear, 
Until the white day rise. 

But if the folk be piteous 

And pity the poor dead 
That weary in the narrow house 

Upon the cold earth's bed, 

They pile the peats upon the fire 
And leave the door ajar. 

That so the rosy flame aspire 
To where the grey ghosts are. 

And syne they sweep the cottage floor 
And set the hearthside chair : 

The sad sprites watch beside the door 
Till midnight still the air. 



THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 125 

And then toward the friendly glow 

Come trooping in the dead ; 
Until the cocks for morning crow, 

They sit by the fire red. 



II 



" Oh, I have wearied long enough ! 

I'll weary me no more ; 
But I will watch for my dead love 

Till Hallow-tide be o'er." 



He set the door across the sill ; 

The moonlight fluttered in ; 
The sad snow covered heath and hill, 

As far as eye could win. 

The thin frost feathered in the air ; 

All dumb the white world lay ; 
Night sat on it as cold and fair 

As death upon a may. 



He turned him back into the room 

And sat him by the fire : 
Night darkened round him in the gloom 

The shadowtide rose higher. 

He rose and looked out o'er the hill 
To where the grey kirk lay ; 

The midnight quiet was so still. 
He heard the bell-chimes play. 



126 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

Twelve times he heard the sweet bell chime ; 

No whit he stirred or spoke ; 
But his eyes fixed, as if on Time 

The hour of judgment broke. 

And as the last stroke fell and died, 

Over the kirkyard grey 
Himseemed he saw a blue flame glide. 

Among the graves at play. 

A flutter waved upon the breeze. 

As of a spirit's wings : 
A wind went by him through the trees, 

That spoke of heavenly things. 

Himseemed he heard a sound of feet 

Upon the silver snow : 
A rush of robes by him did fleet, 

A sighing soft and low. 

He turned and sat him down again ; 

The midnight filled the place : 
The tears ran down like silent rain 

Upon his weary face. 

" She will not come to me," he said ; 

" The death-swoon is too strong : 
She hath forgot me with the dead. 

Me that she loved so long. 

" She will not come : she sleeps too sweet 

Within the quiet ground. 
What worth is love, when life is fleet 

And sleep in death so sound ? 



THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 127 

"She will not come ! " — A soft cold air 

Upon his forehead fell : 
He turned him to the empty chair ; 

And there sat Isobel. 

His dead love sat him side by side, 

His minnie white and wan : 
Within the tomb she could not hide, 

Whilst he sat weeping on. 

Ah, wasted, wasted was her face, 

And sore her cheek was white ; 
But in her eyes the ancient grace 

Burnt with a feeble light. 

Upon her breast the grave-wede grey 

Fell to her little feet ; 
But still the golden tresses lay 

About her bosom sweet. 

" Ah, how is't with ye, Isobel ? 

How pale ye look, and cold ! 
Ah, sore it is to think ye dwell 

Alone beneath the mould ! 

" Is't weary for our love yeVe grown 

From dwelling with the dead. 
Or shivering from the cold grave-stone 

To find the firelight red ? " 

" Oh, 'tis not that I'm lorn of love 

Or that a-cold I lie : 
I trust in God that is above 

To bring you by-and-by. 



128 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

" I feel your kisses on my face, 
Your kisses sweet and warm : 

Your love is in the burial-place ; 
I feel nor cold nor worm. 

"I feel the love within your heart 

That beats for me alone : 
I fear not change upon your part 

Nor crave for the unknown. 

"For to the dead no faint fears cling : 

All certainty have they : 
They know (and smile at sorrowing) 

Love never dies away. 

"No harm can reach me in Death's deep 

It hath no fear for me : 
God sweetens it to lie and sleep, 

Until his face I see : 

" He makes it sweet to lie and wait, 

Till we together meet 
And hand-in-hand athwart the gate 

Pass up the golden street. 

" But where's the babe that at my side 

Slept sweetly long ago ? 
So sore to me to-night it cried, 

I could not choose but go. 

" I heard its voice so full of wail. 

It woke me in the grave : 
Its sighs came to me on the gale, 

Across the wintry wave. 



THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 129 

" For though death lap her wide and mild, 

A'mother cannot rest, 
Except her little sucking child 

Be sleeping at her breast." 

" Ah, know'st thou not, my love ? " he said : 

" Methought the dead knew all, 
When in that night of doom and dread 

The moving waters' wall 

" Smote on our ship and drove it down 

Beneath the raging sea. 
All of our company did drown, 

Alas ! save only me. 

" And me the cruel billows cast 

Aswoon upon the strand ; 
Thou dead within mine arms held fast, 

Hand locked in other's hand. 

" The ocean never to this day 

Gave up our baby dead : 
Ah, woe is me that life should stay 

When all its sweet is fled ! " 

" Go down," said she, " to the seashore : 

God taketh ruth on thee : 
Search well ; and I will come once more 

Ere yet the midnight be." 

She bent her sweet pale mouth to his : 

The snowdrift from the sky 
Falls not so cold as did that kiss : 

He shook as he should die. 



I30 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

She looked on him with yearning eyes 
And vanished from his sight : 

He heard the matin cock crow thrice ; 
The morning glimmered white. 

Then from his place he rose and sought 

The shore beside the sea : 
And there all day he searched ; but nought 

Until the eve found he. 

At last a pale star glittered through 

The growing dusk of night 
And fell upon the waste of blue, 

A trembling wand of light. 

And lo ! a wondrous thing befell : 
As though the small star's ray 

Availed to break some year-old spell 
That on the water lay, 

A white form rose out of the deep, 

Where it so long had lain. 
Cradled within the cold death-sleep : 

He knew his babe again. 

It floated softly to his feet ; 

White as a flower it lay : 
Christ's love had kept its body sweet 

Unravished of decay. 

He thanked God weeping for His grace ; 

And many a tear he shed 
And many a kiss upon its face 

That smiled as do the dead. 



THE BALLAD OF TSOBEL 131 

Then to the kirkyard where the maid 

Slept cold in clay he hied ; 
And with a loving hand he laid 

The baby by her side. 



Ill 

The dark fell down upon the earth ; 

Night held the quiet air : 
He sat before the glowing hearth, 

Beside the empty chair. 

Twelve times at last for middle night 
Rang out the kirkyard bell : 

Ere yet the twelfth was silent quite, 
By him sat Isobel. 

Within her arms their little child 
Lay pillowed on her breast : 

Death seemed to it as soft and mild 
As heaven to the blest. 

Ah, no more wasted was her face. 
Nor white her cheek and wan ! 

The splendour of a heavenly grace 
Upon her forehead shone. 

She seemed again the golden girl 
Of the long-vanished years : 

Her face shone as a great sweet pearl. 
Washed and made white in tears. 



132 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

The light of heaven filled her eyes 
With soft and splendid flame ; 

Out of the heart of Paradise 
It seemed as if she came. 

He looked upon her beauty bright ; 

And sore, sore sorrowed he, 
To think how many a day and night 

Between them yet must be. 

He looked at her with many a sigh ; 

For sick he was with pain. 
To think how many a year must fly 

Ere they two met again. 

She looked on him : no sadness lay 

Upon her tender mouth ; 
And syne she smiled, a smile as gay 

And glad as in her youth. 

" Be of good cheer, dear heart," said she 

" Yet but a little year 
Ere thou and I together see 

The end of doubt and fear. 

" Come once again the saints' night ring 

Unto the spirits' feet. 
Glad with the end of sorrowing. 

Once more we three shall meet ; 

" We three shall meet no more to part 

For all eternity : 
'Gin I come not to thee, sweetheart. 

Do thou come then to me." 



THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 133 



IV 



Another year is past and gone : 
Once more the lingering h'ght 

Fades from the sky and dusk falls down 
Upon the Holy Night. 

The hearth is clear ; the fire burns red ; 

The door stands open wide : 
He waits for the beloved dead 

To come with Hallow-tide. 

The midnight rings out loud and slow 

Across the frosty air : 
He sits before the firelight-glow, 

Beside the waiting chair. 

The last chime dies into the night : 

The stillness grows apace : 
And yet there comes no lady bright 

To fill the empty place. 

No soft hand falls upon his hair ; 

No light breath fans his brow : 
The night is empty everywhere ; 

The birds sleep on the bough. 

" Ah woe to me ! the night fades fast ; 

Her promise is forgot : 
Alas ! " he said, " the hours fly past. 

And still she cometh not ! 



134 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

*' So sweet she sleeps and sleeps with her 

The baby at her breast, 
No thought of earthly love can stir 

Their undesireful rest. 

" Ah, who can tell but Time may lay 

Betwixt us such a space 
That haply at the Judgment Day 

She will forget my face." 

The still night quivered as he spoke j 

He felt the midnight air 
Throb and a little breeze awoke 

Across the heather bare. 

And in the wind himseemed he heard 
His true love's voice once more : 

Afar it came, and but one word, 
" Come ! " unto him it bore. 

A faint hope flickered in his breast : 

He rose and took his way 
Where underneath the brown hill's crest 

The quiet kirkyard lay. 

He pushed the lychgate to the wall : 

Against the moonless sky 
The grey kirk towered dusk and tall : 

Heaven seemed on it to lie. 

Dead darkness held the holy ground ; 

His feet went in and out 
And stumbled at each grassy mound, 

As one that is in doubt. 



THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 135 

Then suddenly the sky grew white ; 

The moon thrust through the gloom : 
The tall tower's shade against her light 

Fell on his minnie's tomb. 

Full on her grave its shadow fell, 

As 'twere a giant's hand, 
That motionless the way doth tell 

Unto the heavenly land. 

He fell upon his knees thereby 

And kissed the holy earth, 
Wherein the only twain did lie 

That made life living-worth. 

He knelt ; no longer did he weep ; 

Great peace was on his soul : 
Sleep sank on him, a wondrous sleep, 

Assaining death and dole. 

And in the sleep himseemed he stood 

Before a high gold door. 
Upon whose midst the blessed Rood 

Burnt like an opaPs core. 

Christ shining on the cross to see 

Was there for all device : 
Within he saw the almond-tree 

That grows in Paradise. 

He knew the fallen almond-flowers 

That drop without the gate, 
So with their scent the tardy hours 

Be cheered for those that wait. 



136 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 

And as he looked, a glimmering light 
Shone through the blazoned bars : 

The wide tall gate grew blue and bright 
As heaven with the stars. 

A postern opened in his face ; 

Sweet savours breathed about ; 
And through the little open space 

A fair white hand came out : 

A hand as white as ermolin, 

A hand he knew full well, 
Beckoned to him to enter in — 

The hand of Isobel. 

Lord Christ, Thy morning tarrieth long : 
The shadows come and go : 

These three have heard the angels' song ; 
Still many wait below. 

These three on heaven's honey feed 

And milk of Paradise : 
How long before for us indeed 

The hills of heaven rise ? 

How long before, joined hand-in-hand 
With all the dear-loved dead, 

We pass along the heavenly land 
And hear the angels' tread ? 

The night is long : the way is drear : 
Our hearts faint for the light : 

Vouchsafe, dear Lord, the day draw near. 
The morning of Thy sight ! 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



BARCAROLLE 

Out sails to the fresh breeze ! 

My heart 

Pines for the open seas. 

The soft moon flowers, like a dream-delight, 

Over the full tide-flow. 

Shake out the sails 1 Sweetheart, we will depart, 

We will depart and sail the seas to-night. 

Whilst on the foam that flees 

The blithe breeze flutters and the weed floats slow, 

The moon above us and the tide below. 

Where shall we steer to-night ? 

The moon 

Lies like a lane of white. 

Far out beyond our vision in the West, 

Over the dreaming sea, 

As if some goddess walked with silver shoon 

Over the dimples of each white-winged crest. 

Sweetheart, the way is bright : 

Shall we trim sails and follow it till we 

Win to some shimmering world of fantasy ? 

Folk hold we chase a dream : 
They say 

That the bright worlds, which beam 
Beyond the setting and the dying day, 



138 BARCAROLLE 

Are shows begotten of the air and light, 
Delusions distance-woven for the sight, 
Mere mirages, that seem 
And flee before us with unceasing flight : 
We lose our lives, they tell us, following 
A vain, unreal thing. 

'Twere better far to bide 

On shore, 

To delve the round earth's side 

For diamonds and golden glittering store 

And in the strife for wealth and worldly praise 

Join, heaping up the treasure of the days 

With great and goodly store 

Of what men follow in the mortal ways ; 

Since, as they say, these only real are 

And all things else unreal as a star. 

What matter what they say ? 

We know 

That which on dullards' way 

They prate but of, as idiots do, who go, 

Strange spells and magic words without comprise 

Reciting, which, if spoken wizard-wise. 

Would overthrow 

The world and rend with ruin earth and skies : 

We soar, whilst here below they herd like sheep ; 

We waken, whilst they sleep. 

For them, dull life once o'er, 

They lie 

And rot for evermore ; 

There is no part of them but all must die. 



BARCAROLLE 139 

Since all their thoughts are earthy as their dust, 
Their spirits as their bodies rust in rust ; 
No hope have they, on high 
To raise them, but for ever perish must : 
What shall avail to lift them from the grave 
Of all that here they crave ? 

With them what shall they bear 

Away, 

Into the nether air, 

Of all the goods they garner night and day ? 

Shall they regild death's darkness with their gold ? 

Shall their wealth warm them in the utter cold ? 

Their honour cleave the clay ? 

Will the worm do them worship in the mould ? 

Nay, earth to earth and dust to dust must back ; 

With life all else must lack. 

But we, whose kingdom is not of the earth. 

Whose weal 

No world of death and birth 

Might work nor fill the yearnings that we feel, 

Our visions overlasting life and death, 

Our dreams that cease not with the 'scape of breath, 

From us death cannot steal 

The splendour and the fulness of our faith ; 

We bear with us into the realms of Night 

The seeds of life and light. 

Not of the dust our hope. 

Our thought. 

That soars beyond earth's scope. 

If here it gain the glories not it sought. 



HO BARCAROLLE 

Itself its warrant is that such things are, 
That the bright visions, here from us afar 
Which flee, are not for nought ; 
Nay, though it be beyond the topmost star. 
Our dreams, that seem delusions, simple sooth 
Are in the air of truth. 

Since here our each desire, 

Fulfilled, 

Becomes a wasting fire, 

A mocking counterfeit of what we willed. 

Thrice happy they who chase some Golden Fleece, 

Beyond man's wit, who seek without surcease 

Some vision that they build. 

Some lovely land of everlasting peace. 

Who, after some divinest dream, o'erstray 

The strands of night and day ! 

Come, then, launch out with me 

And steer 

Into the shoreless sea ! 

Shake out the sails and follow without fear 

Into the distance and the golden West ! 

We yet shall sight the Islands of the Blest ; 

We yet the Hesperian Gardens of our quest 

Shall compass, if not here, 

In this our world of ravin and unrest. 

Then in those lands of a serener air 

Where truth alone is fair. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



RONDEAU REDOUBLE 

My day and night are in my lady's hand ; 

I have none other sunrise than her sight : 
For me her favour glorifies the land, 

Her anger darkens all the cheerful light. 

Her face is fairer than the hawthorn v^^hite, 
When all a-flower in May the hedge-rows stand 

Whilst she is kind, I know of none affright : 
My day and night are in my lady's hand. 

All heaven in her glorious eyes is spanned : 

Her smile is softer than the summer night, 
Gladder than daybreak on the Faery strand : 

I have none other sunrise than her sight. 

Her silver speech is like the singing flight 
Of runnels rippling o'er the jewelled sand ; 

Her kiss a dream of delicate delight ; 
For me her favour glorifies the land. 

What if the winter slay the summer bland ! 

The gold sun in her hair burns ever bright : 
If she be sad, straightway all joy is banned : 

Her anger darkens all the cheerful light. 

Come weal or woe, I am my lady's knight 
And in her service every ill withstand : 

Love is my lord, in all the world's despite, 
And holdeth in the hollow of his hand 
My day and night. 

From « Exotica." 

i4« 



ROCOCO 

Straight and swift the swallows fly- 
To the sojourn of the sun ; 
All the golden year is done, 
All the flower-time flitted by ; 
Through the boughs the witch-winds sigh 
But heart's summer is begun ; 
Life and Love at last are one. 
Love-lights glitter in the sky. 
Summer days were soon outrun, 
With the setting of the sun ; 
Love's delight is never done. 
Let the turn-coat roses die ; 
We are lovers. Love and I : 
In Love's lips my roses lie. 



A BIRTHDAY SONG 

What shall I say to my dearest dear, 

On the sweetest day of the whole sweet year ? 

Shall I tell her how dainty she is and sweet, 

From her golden head to her silver feet ? 
Love of my loves, shall I say to her — 

Till the breeze catch tune and the birds repeat 
The chime of my song — thou art bright and rare, 
(Eyes of the grey and amber hair) 

Who is so white as my love, my sweet ? 
Who is so sweet and fair ? 

Ah, no ! for my song would faint and die, 
Faint with a moan and a happy sigh. 

For a kiss of her lips so clear and red. 

For a touch of her dainty gold-wrought head 
And a look of her tender eye ! 

And even the words, if words there were said. 
Would fail for the sound of her lovely name. 
Till the very birds should flout them to shame, 

That they strove to render silver with lead. 
To image with snow the flame ! 

So e'en I must sing her over again 

The old old song with its one refrain, 

The song that in spring like the cooing dove 

Has nothing for burden but just " I love." 
143 



144 A BIRTHDAY SONG 

Go, O my songs, like a silver rain. 

And flutter her golden head above ; 
Sing in her w^alks and her happy day, 
Fill all her dreams with the roundelay, 

" I love " and " I love her," again and again, 
" I love her," sorry or gay ! 

Is she thinking of me, my lady of love ? 
(Heart of my heart, is the day enough 

For the thought and the w^ish of her daintiness 

And the memory of the last caress ?) 
Do her lips seek mine, my gold-plumaged dove — 
My little lady w^ith glass-grey eyne — 

In long sv/eet dreams of the night to press 
From the grapes of delight Love's golden w^ine ? 

Does thought seem more and the world seem less. 
As her hand strays, seeking mine ? 

Fly to her, fly, O my little song ! 
(Fly to her quickly ; the way is long 

And your little dove-coloured wings are weak.) 

Nestle your head on her roseleaf cheek ; 
Say what I would, if my wings were strong 

And the heaven were near to seek : 
Take all the tender fancies that lie 
And flower in my heart so silently ; 

Sing her the love I can never speak 
Wholly, but in a sigh ! 

From "Songs of Life and Death." 



VILLANELLE 

The air is white with snow-flakes clinging ; 

Between the gusts that come and go 
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 

Methinks I see the primrose springing 

On many a bank and hedge, although 
The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 

Surely the hands of Spring are flinging 

Wood-scents to all the winds that blow : 
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 

Methinks I see the swallow winging 

Across the woodlands sad with snow ; 
The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 

Was that the cuckoo's wood-chime swinging ? 

Was that the linnet fluting low ? 
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 

Or can it be the breeze is bringing 
The breath of violets ? Ah no ! 
The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 

'45 K 



146 VILLANELLE 

It is my lady's voice that's stringing 
Its beads of gold to song ; and so 
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 

The violets I see upspringing 

Are in my lady's eyes, I trow : 
The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 

Dear, whilst thy tender tones are ringing, 

E'en though amidst the winter's woe 
The air is white with snow-flakes clinging, 
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 

From "Exotica." 



RONDEAU 

Life lapses by for you and me, 
Our sweet days pass us by and flee 
And evermore death draws us nigh : 
The blue fades fast out of your sky, 
The ripple ceases from our sea. 
What would we not give, you and I, 
The early sweet of life to buy ? 
Alas ! sweetheart, that cannot be ; 
Life lapses by. 

Yet, though our young years buried lie. 
Shall love with spring and summer die ? 
What if the roses faded be ? 
We in each other's eyes will see 
New springs nor questions how or why 
Life lapses by. 

From "Exotica." 



RONDEAU 

One of these days, my lady whispereth, 
A day made beautiful with summer's breath, 
Our feet shall cease^from these divided ways. 
Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze 
And flower together in a mingling wreath. 
No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze. 
No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze ; 
Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith, 
One of these days. 

Ah love, my love ! Athwart how many Mays 
The old hope lures us with its long delays ! 
How many winters waste our fainting faith ! 
I wonder, will it come this side of death, 
With any of the old sun in its rays, 
One of these days ? 

From ** Exotica." 



148 



BASSARID'S HORN 

FROM " THE BOOK OF HERCULES " 

Young, fair land, 
Robe thyself with flowers ; arise and shine ! 
Spring, that holdst the summer in the hollow of thy 

hand. 
Come, for the sweetness of the year is thine. 

Amethyst sea, 
Blossom and bird-song have burst their winter's graves : 
See, in the distance the month of storms doth flee : 
Laugh with the lucent sapphire of thy waves. 

Soul of man. 
Shake off thy sadness, for the Spring is here. 
Mark how the meadows have braved the winter's ban ; 
Glow with the gladness of the newborn year. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



M9 



FROM "REQUIEM FOR OUR DEAD 
IN SOUTH AFRICA" 



Their bodies are buried in peace ; 
but their name liveth for ever- 
more.— EccLUS. xliv. 14. 



Happy are our dead that on the veldt are sleeping, 
Our dear-beloved dead, that died for England's sake 
They w^eary not, as we who watch and wake, 
To follow, on the war-tide's ebb and flow. 
The fluctuant fight against the faithless foe. 
Nor hear the widows and the orphans weeping. 
Upon their graves the shadows come and go ; 
Their quiet sleep no battle-thunders break, 
No shouts of jubilance, no wails of woe : 
Their seed of sacrifice and duty shed 
Upon the embattled field and with the red 
Of their young hearts"* blood watered, they lie low 
And are content to sleep and wait the reaping : 
They are at peace beneath the moonbeams creeping j 
They feel the sun-blaze not upon their head ; 
They shiver not beneath the winter's snow. 
They need no pity, all with them is well ; 
O'er them the stars the eternal watch are keeping. 
The refluent tides of heaven wane and swell ; 
The reverent skies rain softly on their bed : 
Far oversea, beyond the wild waves' leaping. 
They rest in peace, our well-beloved dead. 



"REQUIEM FOR OUR DEAD" 151 

Happy are our dead, that in our hearts are living, 

Our holy dead, who died to hold us true and great ! 
Whatever lie beyond the years in vv^ait, 

Whatever webs the future may be weaving. 

Theirs shall the glory be, for theirs the giving. 

'Twas they that stemmed for us the storm of hate ; 
'Twas they that turned for us the tides of Fate : 

Ours was the wreck ; but theirs was the retrieving ; 

They gave us all and asked for no returning, 

Fought on nor looked to know the darkness burning 
With the bright signs of morning or to see 
The dayspring and the dawn of victory. 

Enough their faith for them and the believing 
That England never from her fair estate 
Should fail whilst yet her lion brood should be, 
Each breast a bulwark in her foremost gate. 

Strong with the strength of duty for the achieving 
Of the impossible by land and sea, 
Each one a little England, unafraid 
To face the world in arms, where England bade. 

Theirs is the triumph ; ours is the bereaving ; 

The trophy theirs ; ours but the broken blade, 
The bloodstained arms, for love and memory laid. 
Wet with our weeping, on the narrow bed 
Whereas our heroes sleep, of doubt and dread 

Absolved, of sorry thought and sad conceiving. 

So leave we them to rest ; but, in the leaving. 

Let not their perfect peace our mourning mar ; 

Let not our tears upon their triumph jar. 

They live and shall not die ! Whilst England stands 

Upon the Eastern and the Western strands, 

The light of virtue haloing her head, 

Crowned, from the morning to the evening-red, 

Queen of the Orient and the Austral lands, 



152 "REQUIEM FOR OUR DEAD" 

The memory of their deeds shall never die : 
Whilst " England liveth yet ! " it shall be said, 
Defying Time that maketh low and high, 

This one downsetting still and that upheaving, 

They shall live on with England. Far and nigh, 
Their names shall shine as polestars in her sky, 
Till she and all her memories are sped. 

Leave them to rest ; there is no need of grieving. 
Sleep on in peace, our unforgotten dead 1 

Jan. 1902. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER 



A WIND came over the Western water, 

{Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh spring-time!) 

"Weary of life," it said, " poor lover ? 
Sick for a love that is dead and gone ? 

(Winds blow over her, earth's above her.) 
Sick for a day that was faded at dawn ? 

The cure is the kiss of the marsh-king's daughter." 

Weary of life, I answered and said, 

" O wind of the Western water ! " 
Sick for a day and a love that are dead, 
" Why should I seek," I answered and said, 

" The kiss of the marsh-king's daughter ? " 



II 

The wind came over the Western water : 

{The death-flower blows in the summer' s p/une !) 

" If one be weary and sick of living. 

Sick for the sake of a vanished love, 

Sick of the glow and blossom of spring, 
Sick of the summer's glitter and ring j 

If colour lack in the autumn's weaving, 
And the winter hold not sorrow enough. 

The cure is the kiss of the marsh-king's daughter.' 
153 



154 THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER 

Weary of life, I answered and said, 

" O wind of the Western water ! " 
Bitter with tears that I could not shed, 
" Tell me, West-wind," I answered and said, 
" The home of the marsh-king's daughter ? " 



III 

" It lies far over the Western water, 

{Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh spring-time !) 

Under the arch of the sun at setting, 
'Twixt gold of sunset and dusk of night. 

Under the sound of the sea-winds' fretting ; 
In the purple heart of the marish mist, 
That the shafts of the dying day have kissed, 

Under the ceiling where stars are bright. 

There is the home of the marsh-king's daughter. 

Weary of life, I answered and said, 

" O wind of the Western water ! 
My hopes lie close in the house of the dead ; 
But I will go," I answered and said, 

" To seek for the marsh-king's daughter." 



IV 

I wandered over the Western water, 

(O/2 sweet is the rose in the fresh spring-time /) 
And I came in the evening, when light was dying. 

To a land where the hum of the world was still, 
Where the voice of the evening wind was sighing 

And the spells of sleep were over the air ; 

And I saw in the setting the golden hair 
Of the sunset broider the mists, until 
They grew to the robe of the marsh-king's daughter. 



THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER 155 

Golden starlets were over her head, 

(A crown for the marsh-king's daughter.) 

" Come to my arms,"" I answered and said ; 

And she came, with the West-wind's murmurous 
tread, 
To me that so long had sought her. 



A voice came over the Western water : 

{The death- flower blows in the summer's prime !) 

" Dearly," it said, " hast thou won and bought her. 
Her kisses are cold as are the dead 
And the gold of her hair o^er thee is shed. 

As wings of the birds that fly to the slaughter ! 
The lips thou shouldst kiss are living and red. 

Thine eyes should feast on the joys of earth. 
Thy hands pluck flowers in the golden prime. 

Youth was not made for sorrow and dearth : 
Get thee back, whilst there yet is time ; 

For Death is the name of the marsh-king's 
daughter ! " 

Weary of life, I answered and said, 

" O wind of the Western water ! 
My lips shall kiss but the lips of the dead." 
Sick of the day, I answered and said, 

" Kiss me, O marsh-king's daughter ! " 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



THE WESTWARD SAILING 

Oh, blithe and glad the Hege-folk were 

In all the Norway strand 1 
For home the king a bride did bring. 

The king of all the land. 

With many a gay gold flag they decked 

The city of the king ; 
Loud sang the choirs and from the spires 

The bells for joy did ring. 

There was no man in all the land 

But laid his grief aside, 
What time the king with holy ring 

Was wedded to his bride. 

Within the royal banquet-hall 

The bridal feast was spread ; 
The cup went round with garlands crowned. 

And eke the wine ran red. 



The harpers smote the silver strings, 
The gleemen all did sing 

Thereto a song so sweet and strong. 
That all the hall did ring. 

iS6 



THE WESTWARD SAILING 157 

And therein sat upon his throne, 

Among his barons all, 
The king, beside his troth-plight bride, 

And ruled the festival. 

He kissed his bride, his bride kissed him. 

From the same cup drank they ; 
And therewithal the minstrels all 

Did sing a joyous lay. 

Oh, merry, merry went the feast 

And fast the red wine ran ! 
The gates gaped wide, and in did stride 

An old seafaring man. 

In russet leather was he clad. 

As those that use the sea. 
And, three times rolled, a chain of gold 

About his neck had he. 

Grey was his head, his beard was grey 

And furrowed was his brow ; 
But in his eye a might did lie 

That made all heads to bow. 

He gazed upon the crowned king. 

Upon his barons all ; 
And there befell a sudden spell 

Of silence in the hall. 

With steel-grey eyes he gazed on them, 
Whilst none the hush might break — 

The words to come were stricken dumb — 
And thus to them he spake : 



158 THE WESTWARD SAILING 

" The lift is clear, the wind blows free 

Toward the sunset land ; 
Oh, who with me will sail the sea 

Unto the Western strand ? 

" Now let the courtier leave his feast 
And plough the deep with me ! 

The king his bride let leave, to ride 
Over the briny sea ! 

" Now let the baron leave his hall, 

The minstrel leave his song ! 
For in the West is set the quest 

Whereafter all men long. 

" There are the forests thick with flower 
And there the winds breathe balm 

And there gold birds sing wonder-words 
Under the summer calm. 

" There is the earth thick-strewn with gems, 

The sands are golden-shelled, 
And in the skies the magic lies 

That gives new youth to eld. 

" Oh, who will sail the seas with me 

Unto the shores of gold ? 
There lieth rest, that is the best 

For all men, young or old." 

Then up there leapt the crowned king. 

The king of all the land : 
" Oh, I with thee will sail the sea 

Unto the Western strand ! 



THE WESTWARD SAILING 159 

" Whate'er thou art, thy words have wrought 

Such yearning in my breast, 
That I will sail, come weal or bale, 

Unto the golden West ! " 

His bride hath laid upon his arm 

Her hand more white than snow ; 
She kissed him thrice, with tearful eyes 

And mouth all white for woe ; 

And on his finger, for a sign 

That he should ne'er forget, 
A ring threefold of good red gold 

And sapphires hath she set. 

The seaman led them with his eye 

Out of the high gold door ; 
And they are come, for wonder dumb, 

Down to the white sea-shore. 

Before the city, on the sea, 

A fair tall ship there lay, 
With sails of silk as white as milk 

And ropes of sea-green say. 

Into the vessel tall and stout 

He brought them every one ; 
And as he bade, all sail they made 

Toward the setting sun. 

Oh, many a weary day they sailed 

Across the silver spray ! 
And ever due the West wind blew, 

But never land saw they : 



i6o THE WESTWARD SAILING 

A wild wide waste of emerald sea, 
Flecked with the argent foam ; 

A sun of gold that westward rolled 
Over the blue sky-dome ; 

The twilight grey, that ends the day, 
And then the moon on high ; 

The purple night, with moonlight white 
And stars thick set in sky. 

So fifty days were wellnigh past. 

And on the fiftieth day. 
At eventide, the sad wind sighed. 

The sapphire lift grew grey. 

The icebergs rose about the ship. 

All in a death-white ring, 
And grimly round with ice they bound 

The vessel of the king. 

The helmsman stood beside the helm ; 

The flesh from off him fell ; 
And in his stead there reared its head 

A grisly Death from Hell. 

The Death-King stood upon the deck. 

High as the topmost mast. 
And thrice among that pallid throng 

He blew a deathly blast. 

With the first breath the sky turned black, 

The sun a red fire grew. 
And ghastly pale, the hearts did fail 

Of all that luckless crew. 



THE WESTWARD SAILING i6i 

A second time he breathed on them 

Under the heavens' pall, 
And with his breath the sleep of death 

Fell down upon them all. 

A third time with his mouth he blew — 

His mouth without a lip — 
And far below the chill tide-flow 

Down sank the doomed ship. 

Deep in the bosom of the sea 

The frozen Norsemen rest ; 
Each mother's son the prize hath won 

That for all men is best. 

All in the trance of that strange sleep, 

Upon the deck they stand ; 
And Death the King, he hath the ring 

Upon his bony hand. 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



FROM "CADENCES" MAJOR 

Oh, what shall be the burden of our rhyme 
And what shall be our ditty when the blossom's on the lime ? 
Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long : 
We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song! 

O lady of my summer and my spring, 
We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet 

throstle sing 
And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet, 
When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear 

fields are sweet. 

We shall see the roses blowing in the green, 
The pink-lipped roses kissing in the golden summer-sheen ; 
We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells 

of summer-gold 
And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the 

corn-crowned wold. 

The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain ; 
There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past be- 
twixt us twain ; 
But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together, 
And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic 
weather. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 

162 



PANTOUM 

A SONG IN THE MALAY MANNER 

The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath, 
The sweet airs ripple up the lake : 

My soul, my soul is sick to death. 
My heart, my heart is like to break. 

The sweet airs ripple up the lake, 
I hear the thin woods' fluttering : 

My heart, my heart is like to break ; 
What part have I, alas ! in spring ? 

I hear the thin woods' fluttering ; 

The brake is brimmed with linnet-song : 
What part have I, alas ! in spring ? 

For me, heart's winter is lifelong ; 

The brake is brimmed with linnet-song ; 

Clear carols flutter through the trees ; 
For me, heart's winter is lifelong ; 

I cast my sighs on every breeze. 

Clear carols flutter through the trees ; 

The new year hovers like a dove : 

I cast my sighs on every breeze ; 

Spring is no spring, forlorn of love. 
163 



i64 PANTOUM 

The new year hovers like a dove 

Above the breast of the green earth : 

Spring is no spring, forlorn of love ; 
Alike to me are death and birth. 

Above the breast of the green earth, 
The soft sky flutters like a flower : 

Alike to me are death and birth ; 
I dig Love's grave in every hour. 

The soft sky flutters like a flower 
Along the glory of the hills : 

I dig Love's grave in every hour ; 
I hear Love's dirge in all the rills. 

Along the glory of the hills 

Flowers slope into a rim of gold : 

I hear Love's dirge in all the rills ; 
Sad singings haunt me as of old. 

Flowers slope into a rim of gold 
Along the marges of the sky : 

Sad singings haunt me as of old ; 
Shall Love come back to me to die ? 

Along the marges of the sky 

The birds wing homeward from the East 
Shall Love come back to me to die ? 

Shall Hope relive, once having ceased ? 

The birds wing homeward from the East ; 

I smell spice-breaths upon the air : 
Shall Hope relive, once having ceased ? 

Hope would lie black on my despair. 



PANTOUM 165 

I smell spice-breaths upon the air ; 

The golden Orient-savours pass : 
Hope would lie black on my despair, 

Like a moon-shadow on the grass. 

The golden Orient-savours pass ; 

The full spring throbs in all the shade : 
Like a moon-shadow on the grass, 

My hope into the dusk would fade. 

The full spring throbs in all the shade ; 

We shall have roses soon, I trow ; 
My hope into the dusk would fade ; 

Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow. 

We shall have roses soon, I trow ; 

Soon will the rich red poppies burn : 
Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow ; 

My hope is fled beyond return. 

Soon will the rich red poppies burn ; 

Soon will blue iris star the stream : 
My hope is fled beyond return ; 

Have mine eyes tears for my waste dream ? 

Soon will blue iris star the stream ; 

Summer will turn the air to wine : 
Have mine eyes tears for my waste dream ? 

Can songs come from these lips of mine ? 

Summer will turn the air to wine. 

So full and sweet the mid-spring flowers ! 
Can songs come from these lips of mine ? 

My thoughts are grey as winter-hours. 



i66 PANTOUM 

So full and sweet the mid-spring flowers ! 

The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath. 
My thoughts are grey as winter-hours ; 

My soul, my soul is sick to death. 

From "Exotica." 



THE BALLAD OF THE KING'S 
DAUGHTER 



I 

The still earth sleeps in the summer night, 

The air is full of the moon ; 
All over the land, in her silver sight, 
The roses blossom ruddy and w^hite ; 

The w^orld is joyous with June. 

There goes a moan in the greenw^ood hoar, 

A moan, but and a w^ail : 
What sighing is that the breezes bore ? 
What plaining is that which shrilleth o'er 

The note of the nightingale ? 

A green glade lies in the middle wood : 

Under the moonlight pale, 
The greensward glitters many a rood. 
Who lies on the grass, bedabbled with blood ? 

A knight in his silver mail. 

A murdered knight on the greensward lies, 

Under the witch-white moon : 

The air is thick with his dying sighs ; 

The nightbirds flutter about his eyes ; 

The corbies over him croon. 
167 



1 68 BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER 



II 

The night-wind wails, 

The moon-silver pales, 
The stars are faint in the mist ; 
The king's daughter rides over hill and dale. 
Under the arch of the pine-shade pale, 
A lily of gold in the moon-mist's veil. 

And as she rides 

Where the mill-stream glides, 
A raven is sitting on the tree by the brown water, 

With *' JVoe to thee ! ohy woe to thee^ kings daughter ! 

Thou ridest to an evil tryst." 

The silence quivers, 
The pine-shade shivers. 
Sad flute-notes wake in the gloom. 
The king's daughter rides in the hawthorn track ; 
Gold is her hair on the black steed's back. 
Whose steps are those 
That the echo throws 
Back on the startled ear of the night ? 
What form is that in the moonlight white 
That follows the track of her horse's feet ? 
Whose hands on the red-gold bridle meet ? 
Whose spells are they that such scath have wrought her. 
That the night-winds cry to her, " TVoe^ king's daughter / 
Thou ridest to thy place of doom" 

The moon brims up 
In her pearled cup, 
The air grows purple as gore ; 
The stars are red 
With blood to be shed ; 



BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER 169 

The king's daughter sees in the purple sky 
The wings of the birds of ill omen fly, 
And the broidered lights in the cloud-rack burn 
With a word that is weary and fierce and stern ; 
The shadows of the night in their arms have caught her, 
And the night-winds cry to her, " TVoey king's daughter ! 
Thy pleasant place of life shall never know thee moreT 

Out of the maze 
Of the woodbine ways. 
Into a moonlit glade 
The maiden rides, with the shape of gloom 
Casting a shade on her cheek's rose-bloom, 
A shadow of surely hastening doom. 
What glitter is that of silvered mail. 
Prone on the grass in the moonlight pale ? 

A sword-hilt joined to a broken blade : 
Whose blood is red on the bright brown steel ? 

Who lies in the sleep of death ? 
It is her knight, that was true and leal. 

Whose lips so often her lips have kissed. 
To whom the shades of the night have brought her ; 
And she hears in the echo his dying breath : 
" Ah 1 woe is me for thee^ king's daughter ! 
Thou comest to a woful tryst.'''' 

Ill 

She hath alighted from off her steed, 
And she hath raised her lover's head 
And laid it on her knees; 
The rose of her heart begins to bleed 
And on her breast his blood is red ; 
Her heart begins to freeze. 



I70 BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER 

She hath arisen from off the ground, 
And she hath ta'en the bloodied blade 
And dug with it a grave ; 
She hath digged a grave both deep and round 
And there his body hath she laid : 
His soul the dear Christ save ! 

She hath folded her round her mantle grey 
And she hath stepped into the tomb 
And laid her by his side : 
The dead and the live, the knight and his may. 
They are wedded at last in night and gloom : 
The grave is fair and wide. 



IV 

The day-flower blows on the eastern hills. 
(Woe is me for the king's daughter !) 
The throstle in the morn 
Sings blithely on the thorn 
And golden is the sun on the grave of the king's daughter. 

The wind of dawn through the forest shrills, 
With leaves for the grave of the king's daughter. 
A lily of red gold 
Its flower-flames doth unfold 
And glisters in the sun from the heart of the king's 
daughter. 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 

Oh, sweet is the spring in coppice and wold 
And the bonny fresh flowers are springing ! 

May Margaret walks in the merry greenwood, 
To hear the blithe birds singing. 

May Margaret walks in the heart of the treen, 
Under the green boughs straying ; 

And she hath met the king of the elves, 
Under the lindens playing. 

" Oh, wed thou with me, May Margaret, 

All in the merry green Maytime, 
And thou shalt dance all the moonlit night 

And sleep on flowers in the daytime ! " 

"O king of the elves, it may not be. 
For the sake of the folk that love me ; 

I may not be queen of the elfland green. 
For the fear of the heaven above me." 

"Oh, an thou wilt be the elfland's queen, 
Thy robe shall be blue and golden, 

And thou shalt drink of the rose-red wine 
In blue-bell chalices holden." 



171 



172 THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 

" O king of the elves, ft may not be, 
My father at home would miss me ; 

And if I were queen of the elfland green, 
My mother would never kiss me." 

"Oh, an thou wilt be the elfland's queen. 
Thy shoon shall be seagreen sendal ; 

Thy thread shall be silk as white as milk 
And snow-white silver thy spindle." 

He hath led her by the lilywhite hand 

Into the hillside palace : 
And he hath given her wine to drink 

Out of the blue-bell chalice. 

Now seven long years are over and gone. 
Since the thorn began to blossom ; 

And she hath brought the elf-king a son 
And beareth it on her bosom. 

"A boon, a boon, my husband the king, 
For the sake of my babe I cry thee ! " 

" Now ask what thou wilt. May Margaret ; 
There's nothing I may deny thee." 

" Oh, let me go home for a night and a day 
To show my mother her daughter. 

And fetch a priest to my bonny wee babe, 
To sprinkle the holy water ! 

" Oh, let me go home for a day and a night 
To the little town by the river ! 

And we will turn to the merry greenwood 
And dwell with the elves for ever." 



THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 173 

Oh, out of the elfland are they gone, 

Mother and babe together, 
And they are come, in the blithe springtime. 

To the land of the blowing heather. 

" Oh, where is my mother I used to kiss 
And my father that erst caressed me ? 

They both lie cold in the churchyard mould 
And I have no whither to rest me. 

" Oh, where is the dove that I used to love, 
And the lover that used to love me ? 

The one is dead, the other is fled ; 
But the heaven is left above me. 

" I pray thee, sir priest, to christen my babe 
With bell and candle and psalter ; 

And I will give up this bonny gold cup. 
To stand on the holy altar." 

" O queen of the elves, it may not be ! 

The elf must suffer damnation, 
But if thou wilt bring thy costliest thing. 

As guerdon for its salvation." 

" Oh, surely my life is my costliest thing ! 

I give it and never rue it. 
An if thou wilt save my innocent babe, 

The blood of my heart ensue it ! " 

The priest hath made the sign of the cross. 
The white-robed choristers sing ; 

But the babe is dead ere blessing be said. 
May Margaret's costliest thing. 



174 THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 

Oh, drearly and loud she shrieked, as if 
The soul from her breast should sever ! 

And she hath gone to the merry greenwood. 
To dwell with the elves for ever. 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



THE HOUSE OF SORROW 

There is a story, told with many a rhyme 

In dusty tomes of old, 
Of how folk sailed, in the fresh ancient time. 

Into the sunset*'s gold : 

Into the land of Western hope they sailed, 

To seek the soul of joy. 
That from the modern life of men had failed. 

Crushed by the dull annoy 

Of pain and toil ; the gladness of the age, 

When Love was king on earth. 
And summer, midmost in the winter's rage. 

In men''s warm hearts had birth : 

This did they seek. Beyond the sun, they thought. 

Deep in the purple West, 
There lay the charm of joyance that they sought. 

Awaiting some high quest ; 

Charm to be won by earnest souls and pure 

And brought anew to life ; 

Wherewith provided, one might hope to cure 

Men's endless dole and strife. 
17s 



176 THE HOUSE OF SORROW 

So, from the chains of love and toil and gold, 

The love of wife and maid, — 
All human ties had they cast loose, — unrolled 

The fluttering sails and weighed 

Swift anchor, steering toward the dying day, 

Hope in their hearts most high 
That they should win the charm that therein lay 

For men's sake, ere to die 

The angel bade them. And the high heart fell 

Not in them, though the wind 
Blew fresh and swift for many a day, the swell 

Ran pearled the keel behind, 

Along the emerald, and the golden dawn 

Sank ever sad and pale 
Into the westering distance and was gone, 

Whenas the dew did fail ; 

And nothing met their vision, save the streaks 

Of gold and crimson, wound 
About the westward, when the dead day's cheeks 

Flushed with the sun, that drowned 

His glory sullenly in amber foam. 

And the dim mists that lay 
Along the sapphire marges of the dome 

Of heaven, in the grey 

Oi the pale dawning, and the narrowing wheel 

Of seabirds round the sail 
And silver fish that played about the keel. 

With many a golden scale 



THE HOUSE OF SORROW 177 

And fin of turquoise glancing through the spray : 

But never the fair line 
Of green and golden shores, the long array 

Of palaces divine, 

That held the dream of their long venturings, 

Rose in the changeful West ; 
But still the ship sped with its silver wings 

Over the fretted crest 

Of the slow ripple ; still the sea was green 

And calm on every side. 
And the swift course unto their vision keen 

Brought but the weary wide 

Grey circle bounded by the silver foam ; 

And still they looked and hoped 
For the fair land where the true joy had home 

Wherefor they sighed and groped 

Amid the mirk of living. Ever pale 

And paler grew the skies, 
And less refulgent in its crimson mail 

The hour when the day dies : 

And every day the dawn was tenderer 

And sadder in its white 
And rosy pudency ; and still the stir 

Of the sad winds of night 

Crept closelier on the noontide, till the day 

Was hardly much more glad 
Than the pale night and morning was as grey 

As when the hours are sad 

M 



178 THE HOUSE OF SORROW 

With stormy twilight. So at last they came 

When, in the dreaming West, 
The scarlet last of sunset's fading flame 

Lay on the billows' breast 

Still climbing skyward, as it were to catch 

The day's last fluttering sigh — 
In sight of a fair city, that did match 

The tender amethyst sky, 

Pale purple with the setting. Very fair 

And lucent were the walls ; 
And in the evening the enchanted hair 

Of some pale star, that falls 

From azure heights of mystery, did seem 

To compass it about 
And girdle it with glamours of a dream, 

Webs of desire and doubt : 

So that for those sweet clinging veils of mist. 

Amber and vaporous. 
One might but faintly note the amethyst 

And jewels of the house 

That rose with many a stately battlement 

Out of the pulsing sea. 
And could but dimly trace the forms that went, 

Most fair and sad to see, 

About the silver highways and the quays 

Of gold and chrysoprase. 
Tender and tristful as the shapes one sees, 

In some sweet autumn haze. 



THE HOUSE OF SORROW 179 

Flit, in the gloaming, through the enchanted air ; 

When there is none to know, 
Save some pale poet, that may never dare 

To tell the lovely woe. 

The tender ecstasy of sad delight 

He has seen pictured there 
Upon the canvas of the lingering light, 

Under the evening air. 

But they that sailed in that enchanted ship, 

No whit cast down, drew sail 
And came to where the amber-polished lip 

Of the gold shore grew pale 

Under the kisses of the purpled sea : 

And there they landed all ; 
And wandering inward through the blazonry 

Of portico and hall, 

They came to where the soul of sadness sat. 

Throned in a woman's form — 
Most holy and most lovely — and forgat 

In her sweet sight the worm 

Of yearning that had gnawed their hearts so long 

And knew at last, 
From her low whispers and the sad sea's song. 

That thither had Life past 

As to its goal-point : for the golden thing, 

That they had lacked on earth. 
Was not (as they had deemed) the god rose-wing 

Of gladness and of mirth — 



i8o THE HOUSE OF SORROW 

The god of vine-and-ivy-trellised brow 

And sunny orient eyes — 
For he doth haunt men ever, did they know 

But to be linnet-wise : 

But that best gift of the Immortal Ones, 

That men have lost for aye ; 
The pure sweet sadness that we know but once, 

And then we pass away : 

The mingled love and pain we Sorrow call, 

There did it dwell alone, 
The tender godlike pain once known to all. 

Now but to poets known. 

There sit they through the long unwearying years, 

At that fair lady's knees. 
Lulled by the ripple of her songs and tears 

And the sweet sighful breeze 

Into forgetting of the things of life 

And the weird shapes that fleet 
Across its stage of mingled dole and strife ; 

For sorrow is so sweet. 

There is no gladness that may equal it 

Nor any charm of bliss. 
And fain would I from the pale seekers wit 

Which way the steering is 

That may, with helm and sail and oar pursued. 

Bring me where she doth dwell, 
The lovely lady of that solitude. 

Is there no one can tell ? 

From " Ballads and Romances." 



SHADOW-SOUL 

"Destine a n'avoir que le songe de mon existence, 
pour moi je ne pretends pas vivre, mais seulement 
regarder la vie. . . . Des jours pleins de tristesse, I'habi- 
tude reveuse d'une ame comprimee, les longs ennuis 
qui perpdtuent le sentiment du n^ant de la vie." — 
Senancourt. 

"On m'a demand^, ' Pourquoi pleurez-vous?' Et 
quand je I'ait dit, nul n'a pleur^, parce que Ton ne me 
comprenoit point. . . . Je soupire parce que la vie n'est 
pas venue jusqu'4 moi." — Lamenn'Ais. 

There is a tale of days of old 

Of how a man, by sorcery, 
Wrought to defeat the spells that hold 

The soul in bonds, and spirit-free 
At will to wander, naked-souled. 

About the earth and air and sea. 

Long thus he went (the legend says) 

Until at length a counter-spell, 
Flung out upon the worldly ways 

From some abysmal crack of hell. 
Seized on him and, for all his days. 

Doomed him to walk invisible ; 

Doomed him to pass among the things 
Of life, its joy and strife and dole, 

Note all men's hopes and wearyings, 
Feel all their tides beside him roll, 

Yet have in all no communings. 
But walk a lone, unfriended soul. 

x8i 



i82 SHADOW-SOUL 

So oftentimes to me it seems 

As if some sad enchantment laid 

Upon my life its hand, that teems 
With many-mingling spells of shade, 

And walled me in a web of dreams, 
Shut out and sole from human aid. 

For life has nought to do with me ; 

I stand and watch its pageant pass, 
Stream by with pomp and blazonry 

Of many goodly things. Alas ! 
Before my gaze its glories flee. 

Like moon-motes on a dream-lake's glass. 

Life's guerdons melt beneath my hands ; 

Its sweets fade from me like a mist : 
I see folk conquer in the lands ; 

I know men crowned for what I missed ; 
I see my barren grey life-sands 

Yield to them gold and amethyst. 

My life is such a shadow-thing, — 
So all unmixed with other lives, 

With all men's joy and suffering 

And all the aims for which life strives, — 

I think sometimes each hour must bring 
The nothingness whence it derives. 

For men pass by me through the air. 
Hot with bright stress of eager aims 

Or furrowed with a sordid care. 

Seeking sweet ease or blazoned names ; 

Glance at me with a passing stare 

And vanish from me like swift flames. 



SHADOW-SOUL 183 

My soul is like a wandering light 

Born of marsh-solitudes and lost, 
A hollow flame of heatless white, 

Among a ruddy life-warm host 
Of living fires, — that may unite 

With none, a solitary ghost. 

My voice is like the voice of woods, 

When the wind shrills between the pines ; 

An echo of sad autumn moods. 
Wherein the listening ear divines 

A tale of endless solitudes, 

Dim vistas stretched in shadowy lines. 

My eyes are like some lake of dun. 

Hid in the shadow of the hills ; 
Where all around, by day, the sun 

Shines nor may pass athwart its sills 
Of firs, but, when the day is done. 

The white moon all the silence fills. 

I gaze around me as I go, 

A pale leaf drifting down the stream ; 
Men's lives flit by me on the flow. 

Made dark or bright with shade or gleam : 
For me, I feel them not, nor know ; 

Life passes by me like a dream. 

I wander with sad yearning eyes 
And heart a-longing for the lost, 

(Known but in some dream-Paradise) : 
And ever as my way is crossed 

By folk, my sad soul shrinks and flies. 
Among live men a sighing ghost. 



i84 SHADOW-SOUL 

My feet love well to haunt the meads 
And wander where the thrush is loud ; 

And yet some sad enchantment leads 
Me aye among the busy crowd, 

And with bent head, my life proceeds. 
Where the smoke hovers like a cloud. 

And as I wander, once-a-while 
I turn to gaze on folk gone by. 

That seem to me not wholly vile. 
Having some kindred in their eye : 

They pass me mutely, and I smile 
And my heart pulses like to die. 

My heart feeds on its own desire : 

The flowers that blossom in my breast 

Blow out to frail life and expire, 

Unknown, unloved and uncaressed ; 

And the pale phantom-haunted fire 
Burns inward aye of my unrest. 

I see twinned lovers, hand in hand. 
Walk in the shadow of the trees ; 

Across the gold floor of the sand 
Life passes by with melodies : 

Alone upon the brink I stand 

And hear the murmur of the seas. 

I see afar full many a maid 

Walk, musing of the love to come ; 

But, as I near them, in the shade 
Of my sad eyes they read my doom 

Of lonely life, and fly afraid 

And leave me silent in my gloom. 



SHADOW-SOUL 185 

None may take hold upon my soul : 

No spirit flies from men to me ; 
Billows of dreams between us roll, 

Waves spreading out to a great sea : 
Neither in gladness nor in dole 

Can our desires conjoined be. 

I have no heart in their delight ; 

My aim has nothing of their aim ; 
And yet the same flowers soothe our sight ; 

The air that rounds us is the same ; 
The same moon haunts our ways by night ; 

The same sun rises like a flame. 

But over me a charm is cast, 

A spell of flowers and fate and fire ; 

My hands stretch out through wastes more vast, 
My dreams from deeper deeps aspire : 

Life throbs around me, like a blast 
That sweeps the courses of a lyre. 

The merest unregarded thing. 

Dropped into this my solitude, 
Fills all my soul with echoing 

Of dreams, as in some haunted wood 
A pebble's plash into a spring 

Is by the circling air renewed. 

And yet there stirs a great desire 
For human aid within my breast ; 

Men's doings haunt me like a fire, 

My heart throbs loud with their unrest ; 

And now and then, as hope draws nigher, 
My soul leaps to them, unrepressed. 



1 86 SHADOW-SOUL 

For, though my feet in silence move 
Alone across this waste of hours, 

My heart strains hopeward like a dove. 
My soul bursts out in passion-flowers ; 

My life brims o'er with a great love, 
Alone in this wide world of ours. 

My full soul quivers with a tide 

Of songs ; my head heaves with a hum 

Of golden words, that shall divide 

The dusk and bid the full light come. 

Alas ! men pass me, careless-eyed ; 
And still my lips are cold and dumb. 

I go beneath the moon at night. 
Along the grey deserted streets ; 

My heart yearns out in the wan light, 
A new hope pulses in its beats ; 

Meseems that in the radiance white 
My soul a like pale spirit meets ; 

As if the trance of the sad star 

Were the mute passion of some spright. 

That (like my own) some fate did bar 
From all life's fruits of dear delight ; 

Some soul that aye must mourn afar 
And never with its love unite. 

Then doth my heart in blossoms ope ; 

A new sweet music sweeps along 
The courses of my soul ; the scope 

Of heaven is peopled with a throng 
Of long-pent thoughts and all my hope 

Pours forth into a flood of song. 



SHADOW-SOUL 187 

Bytimes, too, as I walk alone, 

The mists roll up before my eyes 

And unto me strange lights are shown 
And many a dream of sapphire skies ; 

The world and all its cares are gone ; 
I walk awhile in Paradise. 

But, in the day unfolded clear, 
When the fresh life is all begun. 

My soul into the old sad sphere 

Falls off; my dull feet seem to shun 

Once more the daylight, and I fear 
To face the frankness of the sun. 

Alone and dumb, my heart yearns sore ; 

I am nigh worn with waste desire : 
I stand upon a rocky shore. 

Watch life and love sail nigh and nigher ; 
Then all pass by for evermore 

And leave me by my last hope's pyre. 

And yet I grieve not nor complain ; 

The time for me has long gone by. 
When I could half assuage my pain 

By giving it delivery : 
My grief within my breast has lain 

Unspoken and my eyes are dry. 

I am confirmed in this my fate ; 

I lock my love within my breast 
Nor look to find my soul a mate 

Nor match with hope my hope unblest : 
I am content to watch and wait, 

Impassible in my unrest. 



SHADOW-SOUL 

Long have I ceased the idle stress 
Toward the rending of my gloom : 

I am made whole in loneliness ; 
I lay no blame on this my doom ; 

I curse not, if I do not bless : 
My life is silent as the tomb. 

And yet (methinks) some day of days, 
The silence, that doth wrap me round, 

Shall at its heart of soundless ways 
With some faint echoing resound 

Of my own heart-cry, and the rays 
Of a like light in it be found. 

Haply, one day these songs of mine 
Some world-worn mortal shall console 

With savour of the bitter wine 

Of tears crushed out from a man's dole ; 

And he shall say, tears in his eyne, 

There was great love in this mans soul ! 

Ay^ hitter crushed-out wine of love ^ 
Pressed out upon his every ivord ; 

A note as of some sad-voiced dove^ 
As of some white unfriended bird^ 

Dwelling alone in some dim grove ^ 

Whose song no man hath ever heard ; 

But only the pale trackless sea 

And the clear trances of the moon 

Have quivered to his melody ; 
And for the rapture of the tune. 

Their attributes^ sad sanctity 

And peace, theyj^gave to him for boon ,• 



SHADOW-SOUL 189 

So that his sadness^ in the womb 

Of the mild piteous years, has grown 

A holy thing ; and from the tomby 
Where in the shade he lies alone, 

{^As was in life his lonely doom) 
The seed of his desire has blown 

Into a flower above his grave. 

Full of most fair and holy scent ; 
Most powerful and sweet to save 

And to heal men from dreariment. 
And I shall turn me in my grave 

And fall to sleep again, content. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



DOUBLE BALLAD 

OF THE SINGERS OF THE TIME 

Why are our songs like the moan of the main, 

When the wild winds buffet it to and fro, 
(Our brothers ask us again and again) 

A weary burden of hopes laid low ? 

Have birds left singing or flowers to blow ? 
Is life cast down from its fair estate ? 

This I answer them — nothing mo' — 
Songs and singers are out of date. 

What shall we sing of? Our hearts are fain, 
Our bosoms burn with a sterile glow. 

Shall we sing of the sordid strife for gain. 
For shameful honour, for wealth and woe, 
Hunger and luxury, — weeds that throw 

Up from one seeding their flowers of hate ? 

Can we tune our lutes to these themes ? Ah, no ! 

Songs and singers are out of date. 

Our songs should be of faith without stain, 
Of haughty honour and deaths that sow 

The seeds of life on the battle-plain, 
Of loves unsullied and eyes that show 
The fair white soul in the deeps below. 

Where are they, these that our songs await 
To wake to joyance ? Doth any know ? 

Songs and singers are out of date. 



DOUBLE BALLAD 191 

What have we done with meadow and lane ? 

Where are the flowers and the hawthorn-snow ? 
Acres of brick in the pitiless rain, — 

These are our gardens for thorpe and stow. 

Summer has left us long ago, 
Turned to the lands where the turtles mate 

And the crickets chirp in the wild-rose row. 
Songs and singers are out of date. 

We sit and sing to a world in pain ; 

Our heart-strings quiver sadly and slow : 
But, aye and anon, the murmurous strain 

Swells up to a clangour of strife and throe, 

And the folk that hearken, or friend or foe, 
Are ware that the stress of the time is great. 

And say to themselves, as they come and go. 
Songs and singers are out oj date. 

Winter holds us, body and brain : 

Ice is over our being's flow ; 
Song is a flower that will droop and wane. 

If it have no heaven toward which to grow. 

Faith and beauty are dead, I trow ; 
Nothing is left but fear and fate : 

Men are weary of hope ; and so 
Songs and singers are out of date. 

From "Exotica." 



THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 

Bytimes, from out the stillness of my days, 

Grown silent, as they nigh 
The darkness and the undiscovered ways, 

I hear folk question why 
The fountain of my songs, that once ran high 

And full, is fallen dry ; 
Why in that concert of the fields and hills 

Of poesy, that fills 
Our English heaven with music never mute, 

There is one broken lute, 

One voiceless bird. 
One linnet of the woods, whose wilding note, 

Erst in the morning hours of some that heard 
Held sweet, is dumb within his stricken throat. 

Ere yet the glory of the noon be o'er, — 
Whose song, though day still shines, is heard no more. 

— They ask in very idleness, nor pause 

For answer ; yet the cause 
Who will may know : 
My voice is dumb for weariness of woe. 

I am no night-bird piping in the dark ; 

For me, as for the lark, 
The sun must rise to set me on the wing : 
Except hope shine on me, I cannot sing : 



THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 193 

I cannot carol in a lightless land 

Nor hymn the dawn, except it be at hand.] 

Love was my dayspring and my evenglow, 

The sun that set my April blossoming, 
That made my summer carolful ; and lo ! 
My daystar set in darkness long ago. 



My sun lies buried in a nameless tomb, 
Midmost a mighty desert of the dead, 
Where the great city's gloom 
Lengthens its skirt of shadow overhead, 
Darkening the morning and the evening red. 

There, in the narrow room, 
After long pain and many a piteous day 
Of hopeless waiting for the hopeless end, 
Since love nor care might bend 
The iron course of fore-appointed doom, 

Her weary head to lay 
She came, for whom my songs were sung of yore. 
For whom the barrens of my life ran o'er 
With lush and lavish bloom. 

Since that sad day, my songs are turned to sighs ; 
The flowerage of my heart is all fordone : 
But she, the eternal rest so hardly won, 

At peace she lies 
And sleeps as well, frail lover of the sun. 

Beneath our English skies, 
Our pallid skies of watchet-chequered dun. 
As if she lay where the rose-laurels run 
Adown Grenada's hillside, torrent-wise, 
Or where, amidst the Andalusian vines, 
The rosy gold of Seville's turrets shines. 

N 



194 THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 

Ah, what is left us of the dear-loved dead ? 
The dainty gold-fledged head, 

The eyes' soft grey, 
From which the dreams of childhood never fled ; 

The mouth's rose-campion red, 
The lips, on which the faint smile sat alway. 
Sad as the break of April's youngest day ; 
The rose-blush cheeks and forehead, garlanded 

With clustering curls astray. 
Like woodbine tendrils in the flush of May ; 
The voice, too soft for joy, too sweet for pain. 

That in its blithest tone 
Had yet some note of never-ceasing moan. 

Some half-enchanted strain, 
As of some disembodied spirit, fain 

To be set free again 
From this waste world that never was its own. 

Since in some clime unknown 
The airs and flames of heaven to it were blown ? 
These hath Time taken back to its treasury, 
In other worlds, mayhap, alas ! but ne'er 
In this of night and day reborn to be : 
Nay, all are gone and even memory 

Will fade of what they were. 
Might we but deem some lapse of land and sea, 

Some brighter sky 
Should bring these back to heart and ear and eye, 

These that in death's hand lie ! 
Ah God, to see the daisies springing there. 

Year after year, as if life ne'er should die. 
And see no sign and know no reason why 

Her life that was so fair, 
Her soul, that was so sweet, so heavens-high. 

Is faded out for e'er 
Into the deserts of the abysmal air ! 



THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 195 

Could we but hope the all-engrossing earth, 

That for the eternal rest 
Took back her blighted beauty to its breast, 

Might yet enrich our dearth 
With some unknown, enchanted wonder-birth 
Of blossom, brilliant as her starry eyes. 

Sweet as her balmy breath. 
Some flowerage of heaven, defying death, 
Wherein our yearning memory might retrace 

The frankness of her face, 
In whose bright beauty thought might recognise 
The spirit-prime of her lost loveliness. 

Born as it were again 
In some new earth, delivered from the press 
Of mortal grossness by the purge of pain, — 
Or might we deem the unresponsive air, 
— That bore her gentle spirit far away 

And scattered it for aye 
Beyond the confines of the night and day. 
To all the winds of being, nor would e'er 

Vouchsafe to our despair 
One echo of her voice's dulcet strain, — 
Should yet grow great with graciousness and bear 
Some mystic birth of music strange and fair, 
Some seraph-song of Paradisal bird. 
Some melody of mortals never heard. 

Wherein her silver speech 
And the far memory of her voice might reach 
Our longing ears and witness to our faith. 
She was not all disfeatured by the scaith 

Of unrespective death. 
That something of her sweetness yet survives 

In interstellar lands 
Or in the sunset-calm of spirit-lives. 
Nor was all scattered by the 'scape of breath ! 



196 THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 

Nay, hope is vain ; in vain our lifted hands ! 
In vain our cryings storm the heaven's stair : 
There are no ears to hearken anyw^here, 
No lips to speak in ansv^^er to our prayer. 
The heavens are empty as the empty air ; 
The Gods are dead as she is dead, and nought 

Abides of her but thought. 
In one man's brain, who soon himself must go 
To join the unnumbered nations that lie low^ 
In that untravelled land v/here thought is none 
And sight is senseless there of star and sun. 

One sole man''s thought against the grim array 
Of Death and Fate her only hope and stay, 

Her one 
Frail-seeming fortalice ! And yet, how slight 
Soe'er it show against the iron might 
Of the blind Titans of oblivion, 
Methinks it shall suffice for many a day 

To hinder Time's decay 
From blotting out her traces ; yea, despite 
The myriad graves that let her from the light, 

Th"" innumerable throngs 
That overcrowd her of the nameless dead, 
. Remembrance still shall blossom o''er her head 
And guard her gentle memory from Time's wrongs ; 

For in that narrow bed 
With her my heart lies buried, and my songs. 

If you should find the hidden violet there. 

Softening the smoky air 
With that sad scent of hers, that seems to hold 
The very soul of tears, or see the mould 

Lit with the lucent gold 



THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 197 

Of thronging primrose, — if the breeze should bear 

The roses' royal breath 

And lilies white, 
The fair flower-angels with the heart of light. 
With jessamines unite 
To glorify that darkling garth of death, — 

Think not these are but flowers. 
The common creatures of the sun and showers : 
Nay, these are no mere scions of the spring. 

No summer's blossoming. 
The tired earth's homage to the lengthening hours j 
These are the secret treasures of my prime. 

My hoards of love and rhyme. 
Which, did she live, were songs, but, she being dead. 

Are flowers above her head. 



If you should marvel there to hear the lark 

Sunder the morning-dark 
With that shrill clarion call of his for light. 

Out of the deeps of night, 
Or mark the mavis and the ousel make 
Their wild free music there for April's sake, — 
Nay, if some magic in the air should bring 

The nightingales to sing 
Her requiem who rests beneath the earth 
In this grim graveyard city of her birth. 
Deem not but birds are these. 
But simple songsters of the woods and leas. 
These are no common choristers of air. 
The singing sprites of heaven's lowest stair. 
That hymn the spring and summer everywhere ; 
They are the tuneful creatures of my soul. 

My thoughts of joy and dole, 



198 THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 

Which, did she live, were music wild and free, 

Pageant and jubilee, 
Such as had overflooded land and sea 
With tides of song, but, she being dead, I gave 

To glorify her grave. 

From " Songs of Life and Death." 



SONNETS 

J. B. COROT 

Died 22nd February 1875 

Before the earliest violet he died, 

Who loved the new^ green and the stress of spring 

So tenderly. He knew that March must bring 

The primrose by the brook and all the w^ide 

Green spaces of the forest glorified 

With scent and singing, w^hen each passing v^ing 

Would call him and each burst of blossoming : 

He knewT he could not die in the springtide. 

Yet he was weary, for his task was done 

And sleep seemed sweet unto the tired eyes : 

Weary ! for many a year he had seen the sun 

Arise ; so in the season of the snows 

He put off life — ere spring could interpose 

To hold him back — and went where Gautier lies. 



199 



200 SONNETS 



A STEPHANE MALLARME 

Ami, te souviens-tu des longues causeries, 
Nous promenant le soir le long du Serpentin, 
Suivant, les yeux ravis, le rayon argentin, 
Qui, revetant les tons roses des reveries, 
S'en allait, lentement, le long des eclaircies ? 
Douce, la nuit venait sur I'ombrage serein 
Et dans I'eau satinee, aux moirages d'etain, 
Les gaseliers piquaient leurs flammes adoucies. 
Cependant, nous causions, pliens de la fin du jour, 
Du grand et puissant Art, cette noble maitresse 
Qui serre nos deux coeurs de son fecond amour. 
Sur nos levres — refrain qui revenait sans cesse — 
Chantaient les vers aim6s, les noms des grands amis ; 
Londres pour nous ce soir redevenait Paris. 

From " Les Soirs de Londres." 



SONNETS 20I 



HYDE PARK 

II est un oasis dans la noire cite, 

Nid fleurant ou celui, — dont I'esprit reveur ose, 

Dans ton Babel infect, que la fumee arrose, 

O Londres, 6 s^jour lugubre et enchante, 

Songer parfois a I'Art et la sainte beaut6, — 

Vient la soir, un instant, a I'heure ou le ciel rose 

Guerit du gazon vert la diurne chlorose, 

Se tremper dans le calme et dans rimmensite. 

Parmi la foule, helas ! qui crie et se lutine, 

Esp^rant vainement de tromper la rigueur 

Du chien noir du travail qui tout pres d'eux chemine, 

Seul et sileacieux, il passe, lui, reveur : 

Et quand la nuit gravit la pente crystalline, 

Les vers germent, joyeux, dans son esprit en fleur. 

From " Les Soirs de Londres." 



202 SONNETS 



SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 



The desert of the unaccomplished years 
Fills the round compass of our careful eyes 
And still, from age to age, the same suns rise 
And life troops past, a masque of smiles and tears : 
The same void hopes vie with the same vain fears 
And in the grey sad circuit of the skies. 
To the monotonous music of our sighs, ^ 

We plod tovi^ard the goal that never nears. 
Ah, who shall solve us of the dreary days. 
The unlived life and the tormenting dreams. 
That on the happy blank of easeful night 
Paint evermore for us the backward ways 
And the old mirage, with its cheating streams. 
And urge us back into the unwon fight ? 



SONNETS 203 



SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 



We turn for comfort to the wise of old, 

For tidings of the land that lies ahead, 

The land to which their firmer feet have led, 

Hymning its shores of amethyst and gold. 

We ask ; the answer comes back stern and cold ; 

" Gird up your loins ! Rest is not for the dead. 

Beyond the graveyard and the evening-red. 

New lives and ever yet new lives unfold." 

Ye speak in vain. If rest be not from life. 

What reck we of new worlds and clearer air. 

Of brighter suns and skies of deeper blue. 

If life and all its weariness be there ? 

Is there no sage of all we turn unto 

Will guide us to the guerdon of our strife ? 



204 SONNETS 



SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 



III 

Yes, there is one : for the sad sons of man, 

That languish in the deserts, travail-worn, 

Five times five hundred years ago was born. 

Under those Orient skies, from whence began 

All light, a saviour from the triple ban 

Of birth and death and life renewed forlorn. 

Third of the Christs he came to those who mourn : 

Prometheus, Hercules had led the van. 

His scriptures were the forest and the fen : 

From the dead flower he learnt and the spent night 

The lesson of the eternal nothingness, 

How what is best is ceasing from the light 

And putting off life's raiment of duresse. 

And taught it to the weary race of men. 



SONNETS 205 



SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 



IV 



He did not mock the battle-broken soul 

With promise of vain heavens beyond the tomb, 

As who should think to break the boding gloom 

Of stormful skies, uplifting to the pole 

Gilt suns and tinsel stars. Unto their dole. 

Who batten on life's galls, he knew no doom 

Is dread as that which in death's darkling womb 

Rewrites life's endless and accursed scroll. 

Wherefore he taught that to abstain is best. 

Seeing that to those, who have their hope in nought, 

Peace quicklier comes and that eternal rest, 

Wherein ensphered thou, Siddartha, art, 

Chief of the high sad souls that sit apart. 

Throned in their incommunicable thought. 



2o6 SONNETS 



CON UN ESEMPLARE BELLA 
DIVINA COMMEDIA 

Amico, in questo libro che ti dono, 
La voce angelica del dottor mio, 
De' lai mie' maestro e quasi dio, 
Deir alte cose e con vario suono, 
Ch' ora sembr' arpeggiar ed ora tuono, 
Ragiona, ne' suoi canti oltra pregio, 
Poeta, a te poeta il travaglio, 
Tesor di tutti chi poeti sono, 
Offro, affinche fra noi due impegno 
D' amicizia ed anche segno sia 
Del camminar commune nella Via 
Deir alme nostre, varie d' ingegno 
Fill che le luci suUe sfere spunte, 
Ma nondimen nel variar congiunte. 



SONNETS 207 



TRANSLATION OF THE FOREGOING 

WITH A COPY OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 

Friend,^ in this book I proffer thee hereby, 
The angehc voice of him my song obeys, 
The well-nigh God and master of my lays, 
With various speech, of matters rare and high. 
That harp notes now, now thunder doth outvie, 
Discourseth in his verses passing praise. 
This treasured work of all who bear the bays, 
A poet, to thee, poet, offer I, 
That evermore a pledge betwixt us twain 
Of friendship and to boot a sign it may 
Be of the common travel in the Way 
Of our two souls, that various of strain 
More than in heaven benighted star and star. 
But none the less conjoined in variance are. 

1 Arthur O'Shaughnessy. 



2o8 SONNETS 



OMAR KHEYYAM 

O THOU, the Orient morning's nightingale, 

That, from the darkness of the Long Ago, 

Thy note of unpropitiable woe 

Cast'st out upon the time-traversing gale, 

— Its burden still life's lamentable tale. 

Too late come hither and too soon to go, 

Whence brought and whither bounden none doth know 

Nor why thrust forth into this world of wail, — 

We, thy sad brethren of the Western lands, 

Sons of the secret of this latter day, 

We, who have sailed with thee the sea of tears. 

Have trod with thee the blood-devouring way. 

We, thy soul's mates, with thee join hearts and hands 

Across the abysses of eight hundred years. 



SONNETS 



209 



AD DANTEM 

To thee, my master, thee, my shining one. 
Whose solitary face, immovable. 
Burning athwart the midmost glooms of Hell, 
Calls up stern shadows of the things undone, — 
To thee, immortal, shining like the sun 
In the blue heart of heaven's clearest bell. 
Circled with radiances ineffable, — 
These pale sad flowers I bring, — how hardly won 
From this grey night of modern lovelessness. 
How hardly and how wearily God knows ! 
These at thy feet I lay, whose hues confess 
Thy mighty shade, so haply they may shine 
With some pale reflex of that light divine 
Which ripples round thine own supernal rose. 



210 SONNETS 



WITH A COPY OF HENRY VAUGHAN'S 
SACRED POEMS 

Lay down thy burden at this gate, and knock. 

What if the world without be dark and drear ? 

For there be fountains of refreshment here 

Sweeter than all the runnels of the rock. 

Hark ! even to thy hand upon the lock 

A wilding warble answers, loud and clear, 

That falls as fain upon the heart of fear 

As shepherds' songs unto the folded flock. 

This is the quiet wood-church of the soul. 

Be thankful, heart, to him betimes that stole, 

Some Easter morning, through the golden door — 

Haply ajar for early prayer to rise — 

And brought thee back from that song-flowered shore 

These haunting harmonies of Paradise. 



SONNETS 2H 



BEATRICE 

Sweet, I have sung of thee in many modes, 
If haply singing I might ease my pain ; 
And still the unwearying fates bring me again 
Back by the flowery and the thorny roads 
To the old goal-point : still my soul forbodes 
The coming of the sad sweet dreams of old 
And in my Occident the sunset's gold 
Grows dim and sad above the lost abodes. 
Dear, had I loved thee less or loved life more. 
Had had more hope in men, in love less faith, 
I should not now be seeking, as of yore. 
For the faint sadness of dream-violets' breath ; 
I should not now be weaving, o'er and o'er. 
These bitter melodies of Love and Death. 



212 SONNETS 



INDIAN SUMMER 



I SAID, " The time of grief is overpast : 

The mists of morning hold the plains no more ; 

The flowers of spring are dead ; the woods that wore 

The silver suits of summer o'er them cast 

Are stripped and bare before the wintry blast. 

Is it for thee to weary and implore 

The ruthless gods, to beat against their door 

For ever and for ever to the last ? 

Rise and be strong ; yonder the new life lies. 

Who knows but haply, past the sand-hills traced 

Bounding the prospect, destiny have placed 

A sunny land of flowers and sapphire skies. 

For balm of hearts and cure of loves laid waste ? 

Up, and leave weeping to a woman's eyes ! " 



SONNETS 213 



INDIAN SUMMER 



II 

Then turned I sadly to the olden signs 
By which I had so long lived lingering ; 
The faded woods, the birds long ceased to sing, 
The withered grapes dried on the weathered vines 
And the thin rill that through the time-worn lines 
Of grey-leaved herbs fled, faintly murmuring 
Its ghostly memories of the songs of spring, 
Weird whispers of the wind among the pines. 
Farewell I bade them all, with heart as sad 
Well-nigh as when love left me long ago, 
And turned into the distance. Long I had 
Their murmur in my ears, as long and slow 
The melancholy way did spread and wind 
That left the memories of youth behind. 



214 SONNETS 



INDIAN SUMMER 



III 

At last a new land opened on my view : 
No phantom of the dear dead spring of old 
It was, but a fair land of autumn gold 
And corn-fields sloping to a sea of blue : 
And I looked down upon its face and knew 
The autumn land of which my heart had told, 
The land where love at last should be consoled 
And balm flower forth among life's leaves of rue. 
A sunset land it was ; and long and sweet. 
The shadows of the setting lay on it : 
And through the long fair valleys there did flit 
Strange birds with pale gold wings, that did repeat 
The loveliest songs whereof men aye had wit ; 
And over all the legend " Peace " was writ. 



SONNETS 215 



INDIAN SUMMER 



IV 



And as I gazed on it, my heart was filled 

With rapture of the sudden cease of pain : 

And in my spirit, ever and again, 

There rang the golden legend, sweet and stilled 

With speech of birds ; and in the pauses rilled 

Fair fountains through the green peace of the plain, 

That with the tinkle of their golden rain 

Made carol to the songs the linnets trilled ; 

Whilst, over all, the waves upon the shore 

Throbbed with a music, sad but very sweet, 

That had in it the melodies of yore, 

Softened, as when the angels do repeat. 

In heaven, to souls in rapture of new birth. 

The names that they have sadly borne on earth. 



2i6 SONNETS 



TROPIC FLOWER 

As I went walking in the air one day — 

Sadly enough — a thought laid hold on me 

With flower-soft hands and would not set me free. 

It was, meseemed, as if a rose of May 

Blew suddenly against a wintry way 

Of snow and barren boughs ; for I could see 

No cause why such a lovely light should be 

In my dull soul, nor how my heart's dismay 

Should have lent life to any pleasant thing. 

But, with remembering, presently I knew 

That this was but the scarlet flowering 

Of some most bitter aloe-root that grew 

In my sick soul an hundred years and drew 

All my lost summers to its single spring. 



SONNETS 217 



EVOCATION 

SECOND SONNET 

How many times, sweetheart, how many times 

I have made running rivers of my sighs, 

Poured out my yearning into melodies 

Of love, that on the torrent of my rhymes 

My thought might voyage to those golden climes 

Of mystery, jewelled o'er with sapphire skies, 

Where thy feet walk and make life Paradise ! 

And unto thee, mayhap, as 'twere the chimes 

Of some far dream-bell fluttering in the air. 

The echo of my great desire has won. 

Like to a sigh of spirits far away ; 

And thou, with some still sadness filled and fair, 

Hast for a dream-space stood and watched the sun 

And the clear colours fading from the day. 



2i8 SONNETS 



FEMME FELLAH DE LANDELLE 

O THOU that hold'st the desert in thine eyes, 
With that long look into the world of dreams, 
As of deep yearning for the distant streams 
Of some green oasis that haply lies 
Beyond the torrid glow of orient skies 
In the blue distance ! I have known thee long 
In that dim dreamland, where the fluted song 
Of nightingales is mixed with dulcet sighs 
Of scented winds and balm of mystic flowers ; 
And in the white warm moonlight, all bestrewn 
About the trellised woodways and the bowers 
Vine-clustered, I have often known the tune 
Of birds swell sweetlier and the hurrying hours 
Halt, as thy face grew clear beneath the moon. 



SONNETS 219 



INDIAN ISLE 

I FOUND in dreams a dwelling of delight 

And did possess it with my soul's desire : 

An island, cinctured with the radiant fire 

Of orient noons and girt about with white 

Of wave-washed reefs, wherein there slumbered bright. 

Ah ! dream-bright bays, that brought the blue sky nigher 

Down to my wish ; and many a flower-sheathed spire 

Of mystic splendid trees bare up that height 

Of imminent azure, flowered above the earth. 

There, for my spirit's ease, my hope I laid, 

To dwell within that golden-hearted shade 

And drink the splendour of the things that be. 

Renewing ever with the new sun's birth 

And rounded with the slumber of the sea. 



220 SONNETS 



LIFE UNLIVED 

How many months, how many a weary year 
My soul had stood upon that brink of days, 
Straining dim eyes into the treacherous haze 
For signs of life's beginning. Far and near 
The grey mist floated, like a shadow-mere, 
Beyond hope's bounds ; and in the lapsing ways. 
Pale phantoms flitted, seeming to my gaze 
The portents of the coming hope and fear. 
" Surely," I said, " life shall rise up at last, 
Shall sweep me by with pageant and delight ! " 
But, as I spoke, the waste shook with a blast 
Of cries and clamours of a mighty fight ; 
Then all was still. Upon me fell the night, 
And a voice whispered to me, " Life is past." 



SONNETS 221 



ENGLAND'S HOPE: KITCHENER 
OF KHARTOUM 

Whelp of the lion-breed of Wellington ; 
Careless to fit the date unto the deed 
Or trumpet forth, that all who run may read, 
His valiant worth to every mother's son ; 
In the lost field, as in the victory won, 
Steadfast alike, unrecking whose the meed. 
So but the achievement of his country's need 
And honour saved attend on duty done : 
Diluting action not with vain debate ; 
Contemptuous of Fortune's good and ill ; 
Not blown about, as is the unstable soul, 
Hither and thither with each shift of fate. 
But constant as the compass to the pole. 
Fast founded on th' unconquerable will. 

November 1900. 



222 SONNETS 



ANGEL DEATH 

Lo ! I have made an end of many things, 

Singing ; yet never have I sung to thee, 

Beloved angel, that by life's sad sea 

Standest star-crov/ned, whilst all the dusk air rings 

With the quick spirit-pulse of viewless wings : 

No voice of mine has lifted litany 

To thee with song, no hand of mine set free 

The soul of praise that slumbers m the strings. 

For am I not to thee as one (in this) 

That lingers by some shining water-deeps. 

When the slow tide sings in its moon-stilled sleeps. 

Until his heart-strings catch its harmonies 

And his life pulses to the time it keeps : 

And yet thereof no thing he speaks, ywis ? 



SONNETS 223 



AD ZOILOS 

Chide me who will for that my song is sad 

And all my fancy follows on the wave 

That bears our little being to the grave ! 

When did it fail that those — whose lives were glad 

For lack of light and want of virtue had 

To know the mystery and the hair-hung glaive 

That shadow all our life so seeming brave — 

The accusing wail of those that weep forbad ? 

Peace, triflers ! Peace, dull ears and heedless eyne ! 

Yet haply time unto your foolish fears 

Shall yield a mocking accord and the years 

Falling full-fated on these days of mine, 

Crush from the grapes of grief a bitter wine 

Of laughters, sadder than the saddest tears. 



224 SONNETS 



EXIT 

This is my House of Dreams — a house of shade, 
Built with the fleeting visions of the night : 
Here have I set my youth and all its w^hite 
Sad mem'ries — in this dw^elling that I made 
With idle rhyme, as lonely fancy bade. 
If any wonder at the strange sad might 
The God of Vision holds upon my sight 
And set himself my weak song to upbraid 
For all the wailing notes therein that teem, 
I pray him of his favour that to lands 
Of sunnier clime he wend ; for things that seem 
Are here the things of life and give commands 
To living ; for a dream is on my hands 
And on my life the shadow of a dream. 



THE END 



SEP 2 1903 



